


robbers

by rubyrose



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Awesome Darcy Lewis, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky and Darcy are both a little Fucked Up™, Bucky drives a motorbike, Chicago criminals, Darcy drives a red Porsche, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, References to Drugs, Road Trip, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Violence, chicago gangs, guys there is so much crime in chicago, i'd like to thank not only google but also google maps, not an accurate depiction of organised crime in chicago, partly because im a law abiding 19yr old partly cos im from the UK, rival criminals au, well its more of a fleeing both the law and murderous criminals kind of trip
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2018-10-12 18:03:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 23,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10496553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubyrose/pseuds/rubyrose
Summary: She turns to find him in his worn leather jacket, gun aimed low, duffel bag undoubtedly filled with cash slung over one shoulder. He has a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, and a few strands of dark hair have escaped from the gel he uses and fall across his forehead.“What does it say about us that you’re aimin’ for my head and I’m aimin’ for your feet?”**Bucky and Darcy are sworn enemies when it comes to monopolising organised crime in Chicago. Sworn enemies sleep together, right?





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> I had previously posted a few chapters of this but it got deleted from my account, so here it is again. This started off as a oneshot but has grown into something that is way out of control now. I got really carried away...
> 
> Before you read please be aware of the tags - I haven't put any archive warnings as there isn't anything that I think is that explicit but that is me! Both characters in this fic have upsetting pasts that lead to some destructive and harmful behaviour, so if you aren't sure maybe ask someone to read it first so they can let you know if there may be things that trigger you specifically. 
> 
> I love to hear what you think in the comments. Enjoy :)

Darcy Lewis’s gloved hand pulls a single hundred-dollar bill from the stack of notes and holds it up to the light. It’s fragile; one of its edges is torn, and minute creases corrupt its entire surface. If it were glass, it would have shattered already. And its dirty, of course; money was always dirty, even if it was legal. A single dollar bill has been passed through countless hands, used and dropped and folded over and over again, until it is thoroughly unclean.

She pulls out her lighter, one of the cheap ones from petrol stations, and lets the yellow lick the edge of the dull green. The small flames consume the paper, and she watches as ten, then twenty, then thirty dollars is destroyed. Gone. Ceasing to exist. She blows the fire out before it reaches her fingers and drops the blackened edge of paper. It drifts slowly in spirals and eventually rests beside her red soled heels on the floor of the bank vault she is standing in.

She returns to placing money into her duffel bags, and huffs as one of the stacks is knocked to the floor, the notes scattering on the floor in disarray. She doesn’t even consider picking them up from the floor – which would be undignified and uncomfortable in heels and a dress to say the least – because the money she is taking from this vault is not a hired job, it’s just a little treat for herself, so exact numbers and precise amounts are not a concern.

“Need a hand, sweetheart?”

She draws her 10 millimetre G20, her attention still on the money at her feet, and aims the pistol to her right, where she knows he will be standing with his own gun drawn.

“This place is mine. Find your own bank.”

“I already did,” he protests. She turns to find him in his worn leather jacket, gun aimed low, duffel bag undoubtedly filled with cash slung over one shoulder. He has a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, and a few strands of dark hair have escaped from the gel he uses and fall across his forehead. “What does it say about us that you’re aimin’ for my head and I’m aimin’ for your feet?”

“You scared?” She’s smiling, but it’s closer to a sneer than anything else.

“Like you would shoot me,” he scoffs. “From this close? You’d probably get blood all over that pretty dress,” he drawls, eyes dropping down her body. “And we all know what a bitch it is to clean off.”

“I do it all the time.”

He takes a final drag of his cigarette and drops it on the floor. The dull fire is snuffed out by his boot. “Doll, I only came here to help you. No need to make threats on my life.”

She squints at him. “Did you come here literally just to annoy me? Because I was being serious about not minding bloodstains, Barnes.”

“Alright, alright,” he conceded, and she can see him smirking in her peripheral vision when she turns back to the cash. There’s a pause. “Isn’t this shit illegal though?”

Darcy’s eyes flutter shut. He’s testing her tonight. “What the fuck are you going on about?”

“Thought you’d be more concerned about the police cars on their way, but maybe you got some kind of deal, like you can rob whichever bank on a Tuesday, but not on a Saturday-”

Her head turns sharply at the wail of a police siren and she lets out an enraged snarl. “You didn’t.” Her gun snaps back up, centred unwaveringly on his forehead, and her fingers cover the trigger.

“They followed me,” he shrugs, tilting his head in what could be an apology, but she knows him well enough to know it isn’t.  

“You’re so fucking dead, Barnes, and once I’ve killed you, I’m gonna take all your goddamn money, and then I’m gonna get your bike-”

“Tik, tok, sweetheart,” he drawls.

Her eyes flicker from him to her money to the door of the vault that will be swarming with cops any second. She lets out a sharp hiss and stows her gun, scooping as much money into her bag as she can.

“Can you even run in those shoes?”

She can hear the smirk in his voice as she zips up the bag and throws it over her shoulder.

“I can do better than that,” she smiles, strides forward and knees him in the stomach. He doubles over, winded and surprised, and she carries on walking.

“I’ll be there before you, sweetheart, don’t worry,” he calls after her breathlessly, but she’s already out of the door.

Back when she had nothing of her own, she had seen a woman with long dark hair and a beautiful, red-lipped smile driving a Porsche with the top down through the streets of L.A., and to Darcy, that had been the ultimate picture of freedom. She had believed she had seen happiness that day. She drives her own red Porsche with the top down now through deserted Chicago, a warm breeze lifting her long dark hair from her damp neck, but she doesn’t smile.

The darkness and calmness presented by the early hours of morning relaxes her. She would often stumble, high and terrified, out of the cramped loft, escaping for a few minutes into the hushed streets. For some precious time, she was free, alone, limitless in the darkness.

She pulls up beside the apartment block and gets out quietly, locking her duffel bag of cash in the trunk. The gun stays on her hip as she makes her way inside the building to room 505, their on call apartment, courtesy of a favour Barnes pulled from the drug dealing landlord, and kicks the door shut behind her, fixing the deadbolt across.

“Didn’t get arrested then.” He is lounging on the bed, leaning against the headboard nursing a glass of scotch, and she can see only shadows on his face; his hollowed eyes, creases between his eyebrows, the rough swallow in his throat as he turns to meet her eyes in the half light.

“No.” She takes off her jacket and walks towards him. “You’re gonna pay for that, Barnes.”

He turns away. “It’s not like you haven’t done worse.” His profile catches the yellow streetlamp outside, dressing the scar above his eyebrow in pale light. “Told you I’d beat you here.”

“I was enjoying the drive.”

“Surprised you didn’t run me down if I’m honest,” he smiles, but he has a glint in his eye which Darcy knows means tonight he wants to fuck rough.

“I still might, Barnes.” She pushes her underwear down from underneath her dress, stepping out of the lace. “You know how I feel about cops.”

He stands lazily, placing his drink to the side, and she can see the tightness of his crotch already. “Keep the shoes on,” he says, unzipping his black pants. Darcy rolls her eyes because even his underwear is black. “Cops were an honest mistake, doll,” he shrugs. “Cross my heart.”

“You don’t have one.”

His smile grows. “What would you know about having a heart, doll? You’re probably just here to steal my goddamn money.”

“Am I that predictable?”

He doesn’t answer, only sits back on the edge of the bed and pulls her so that she is straddling his lap, making her dress bunch up around her waist and her core ache from the friction of sitting directly on his lap. His hands are hot and calloused, ghosting over her thighs with an insensitivity that leaves Darcy wanting without knowing what. He grasps her hair, pulls her lips down and kisses her with hot, deep drags of his tongue. She huffs and shoves at his shoulder.

“I hate it when you kiss me,” she glares.

“That’s why I do it, doll.” He tugs her back to him, biting her lips as he kisses her again, and then moving to her throat and jaw. His fingers slip into her, and he makes a satisfied sound when he feels how wet she is, which she hates, so she drags her hand under his boxers and gives a single pull to his straining cock.

“Been waiting all day, Barnes?”

He bites her throat, hard, in response, and she barely stops the groan. “No, but you definitely have.” His finger push into her again, beginning to find a rhythm, but she pulls at his hair sharply, shaking her head.

“You wanna sprinkle some rose petals while you’re at it?”

She rises to her knees so she can push his underwear out the way. Her mocking pisses him off though, his eyes darkening, and before she can sink onto his length, he pushes her around so that she is flat on her back on the bed. He yanks her dress further up to her waist, pulls her hips roughly forward to the edge of the bed where he is standing, his fingers no longer ghosts but claws, and enters her quickly.

He fucks her with hard, deep thrusts which make her want to scream but she doesn’t give him the satisfaction. Instead she groans, biting her lips and digging her nails into his arms hard enough to leave marks. He palms her breasts through her dress, pulls her hair as her heels leave scratches on his back. She comes twice before he’s even close to done, and then once more when he rubs her clit furiously, his thrusts uneven. She grinds back on him when he comes, low moans falling from his lips.

He retreats to the bathroom afterwards, the door firmly shut between them. She finds her underwear, reapplies her lipstick, fixes her hair. It takes her less than a minute to find the duffel bag full of his stolen cash he hid behind the dresser, and she is gone before the bathroom door opens.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the lovely comments on the first chapter! I'm aiming to post 1-2 chapters per week after this. Enjoy :)

“How’s it goin’, sweetheart?” the Brooklyn accent crackles into her ear piece.

She grits her teeth in annoyance, finger slipping off the trigger of her rifle as she reaches for the radio com.

“Fuck off, Barnes, I’m trying to shoot a cop,” she growls into the radio.

“We all know that ain’t true. You don’t touch cops with a ten foot pole.” She seethes. “Also I can see you aiming for the Russian prick.”

She glances down from the rooftop she is lying on, registering his binoculars in the apartment window across the street. “Get off of my frequency. This is none of your business.”

“You owe me over $10,000,” he says into her ear. “I’d say it’s my business.”

“Well, if you want the Louboutin’s and the Cartier necklace back you’ll have to take them off me.” She moves to look through the rifle again. “Right after I’ve shot Sergei.”

“You spent my fuckin’ money on a pair of goddamn _shoes_?” He is yelling now, and she can’t stop the smile. “What the fuck is _wrong_ with you, Lewis?”

She can hear him standing up and punching something, maybe the wall. There is more noise from the background, a chair being kicked, more swearing. She grips the rifle, drags in several deep breaths and then takes the shot.

Her focus is gone though, and Sergei grabs his leg, screaming at the sudden hole in his thigh.

“Fuck,” she hisses, reloading frantically, but Sergei is already ducking behind a dumpster. Her chance is gone. “Fuck you, Barnes, that was your fault.”

There is an incredulous pause. “My fault? _My_ fuckin’ fault? You cocky, conceited bitch, Lewis! At least admit you’re a poor fuckin’ shot, and then maybe apologise for spending my fuckin’ cash on a goddamn pair of _shoes_ -”

She growls, turns swiftly and pulls the trigger again, her second shot exploding the window he is looking out of. “ _Louboutin’s_. _And_ a necklace.”

The line is quiet for a few moments as he pulls himself up from the floor. “You nearly shot me!”

She checks through her rifle, seeing him standing in the now empty window frame, brushing glass from his jacket and hair. “But I didn’t.” She looks one last time for Sergei, but the alleyway is now empty.

“Sweetheart, you are treading on dangerous ground now, I swear to God-”

“What’s it gonna take for you to stop bothering me?”

“You give me the bounty you’re earning on this guy-”

“He’s still alive, Barnes,” she says irritably.

“Not for long, sweetheart, I’ve seen you with a knife.” She hates that he knows exactly what she plans to do next. “So either you give me the bounty, or you give me 10 free passes.”

Darcy scoffs. “That’s funny, Barnes.”

“One for every thousand you owe me,” he says and she can hear his grin, “which seems pretty fair if I’m honest, doll.”

“I don’t know why you think I’ll give you either, because I won’t.”

“Think again, sweetheart.”

She looks through her rifle again and sees him holding his handgun. “Is this your way of telling my you’re going after my bounty?”

She can see his grin. “Either you give me 10 free passes, or I’m gonna have my own little talk with Sergei. We both know I’ll get down there faster.”

Darcy considers her options; neither are appealing. She needs this bounty to pay Riccoletti back, which she definitely needs to do if she wants to make it to the end of the month. She could always shoot Barnes. She’s already blown the window; one clean shot would do it.

“Fine. You get your passes,” she says through gritted teeth. “But if you ever threaten me again, I swear to God I’ll shoot you in the fucking chest, Barnes.”

“That’s a bit hypocritical, don’t you think?”

She takes out the ear piece and crushes it beneath her shoe because he is sort of right, and she has already been humiliated enough. She dissembles the rifle and tosses a glance down at his window again, and once he knows she is looking, he blows her a kiss.

She snarls, draws her pistol from her hip, and shoots the brickwork by the window. The last she sees is him ducking back from the small explosion of red dust.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No apologies for what follows............................

It’s two days later when he calls. It’s late, but he knows that she prefers to sleep in the mornings rather than evenings, and she’s been working anyway. She had a tip from her Russian contact that Fergus O’Donnell – an Irish drug dealer – had been shot, so she had helped herself to the cash and drugs that he had stored in the safe in his apartment vault. It wasn’t like he would be needing them anymore.

 “Where are you?” His voice is slow and lazy, calming the last remnants of adrenaline from her system.

“In Canada, living a crime free life.” She slides off her black boots and trousers, folding them neatly into her walk in wardrobe.

He ignores her sarcasm. “You at your apartment? I know where that is, by the way.”

She slides on some black stilettos that make her ass look amazing, and picks out a short black skirt. “No you don’t. Why are you bothering me?”

“Callin’ in my first favour, doll. Meet me outside the bar where we first met.”

“How romantic,” she says, “I’m afraid I’m busy.”

“You know the rules. Free pass means you drop everything, whenever I say.”

Their free pass deal is probably the most fucked up thing about their relationship, she decides. It’s a power play; one of them can call on the other at any time and do whatever they want to the other. It’s mostly sexual in nature, but she had once used hers to make Barnes steal a particularly high risk jewel from the Kings. He still blamed her for getting stabbed, but really, he shouldn’t have tried chatting up the daughter of the gang leader on his way out.

“I’m bored of these games, Barnes.” She picks out a red top that clings to her, and applies some lipstick.

“You say that every time, sweetheart. Be there in 20 minutes, or I’ll get angry.”

She pulls up in the Porsche 45 minutes later, and she can see the tense set of his shoulders from where he waits under a streetlamp before she even gets out.

“I was gonna go easy on you, but it’s not nice to keep a gentleman waitin’, doll,” he says with a smile, but his eyes are tight and she can tell he is pissed off.

“No such thing as a gentleman.”

He clenches his jaw. “Get on.” He swings his leg back over his bike and shoves a helmet into her hands.

“Oh, there’s no way this is going on my head. Have you ever blow dried your hair? It takes fucking ages.”

Apparently his patience has run out, because he doesn’t even glance up at her quip. “Put the fuckin’ helmet on, Lewis.”

She glares at him for a moment, but she knows he won’t give up. He’s more stubborn than she is, and that’s saying something. “If my car gets stolen or keyed, you’re buying me a new one.”

She shoves the helmet on and climbs on behind him. This is exactly why she drives a Porsche instead of a bike. Her skirt rides up until she may as well have not been wearing one, and Barnes reaches behind him to grope her leg with one hand as he starts the bike. She bites his shoulder hard in return, but he just grabs her arms and wraps them around his torso. When they pull away from the curb and accelerate down the empty road, she holds onto him tighter and she is grinning by the time he pulls up at their destination.

She wipes off her smile before pulling the stupid helmet off - her hair is suitably ruined - and climbs off of the bike, yanking her skirt back down. She glares as she catches him watching her.

“Satisfied?” She gestures to her hair.

He grins lazily. “Looks like it does when I’ve fucked you.”

He takes her up to an apartment – not 505, because he probably wants her to feel like he’s in control – but she knows it isn’t his, because the bed sheets are crisp white and there are purple cushions on the couch. She doesn’t care enough to ask whose apartment it is, she just sheds her jacket and bag on a chair and puts her hands on her hip.

“Well-”

Before she can even start her sentence, he comes up behind her and presses her into the wall, his hands tight on her hips to pull her ass back against him. “No talking,” he breathes.

“Oh, fuck off-” she begins, but he yanks her hands and pins them together at the small of her back, and bites her neck sharply.

“Don’t piss me off, doll.” She rolls her eyes, but keeps her mouth shut. “Last time you had a free pass, you didn’t let me come for hours, remember?”

The sensation of his hot breath against her neck draws a shiver out of her, and his hand that is edging lower is getting more and more distracting.

“I’m gonna do even worse to you, sweetheart. You’re gonna be begging for it,” he tells her, and she believes him. Once he gets an idea in his head, he won’t give up until he’s done it or died trying.

Her weight is slumped uncomfortably against the wall in front of her now, breasts arched forward as he holds her hands between them and then trails his free hand absently down the side of her body and down her bare thigh to spread her legs wider.

“I like this skirt,” he says against her ear, “you wear it just for me? And this top too, I remember fuckin’ you in it before. You dress up specially for me, doll?” She bites her lip as his tongue wets her neck. “That’s sweet, but it’s all gonna come off anyway.”

She hates the way his stupid voice is actually turning her on. The lazy Brooklyn accent is calming her just as much as it’s working her up; she becomes a thrumming engine of energy and lust waiting to be oiled and worked and put in gear by him. His hand is palming her breasts now through her bra and top, and she hates him even more when she tries to grind back into him only for him to step backwards and pinch where her nipple is.

“What did I say, sweetheart? You’re gonna be beggin’ for it.”

He kicks her legs further apart again with his knee and then his fingers are under her skirt and inside her underwear and she can barely keep quiet when he strokes her, softly, gently, barely any pressure; only the sensation of anticipation. But then they are gone as quickly as they were there, and that does make her whimper. He laughs at her and steps away completely, letting her hands fall to her sides.

“Turn around, doll, and take that pretty top off.”

She fixes a glare on her face when she faces him, but does as he asks and then endures the weight of his gaze as he rakes her up and down.

“Now the skirt.” Her hands move to the zipper, but he holds up a hand. “Slow, sweetheart, make it nice for me.”

“I’m not a fucking stripper,” she growls. She shoves the zipper down, scrambles out of the skirt and kicks it at his stupid face. It lands short, barely grazing his shin, which only makes him laugh again and her angrier.

He says, “Coulda fooled me, sweetheart,” and she grits her teeth. “Bra and underwear.” His voice has turned low and rasping and it goes straight to her core as she ditches the garments, her bra arching through the air towards his face, but he catches it with ease. “Stop throwing shit at me!”

She sneers. Her pale form is whiter than she’d like in the dimness of the apartment, but her hair forms a dark crown around her head that matches the black of his clothes and the denseness of the shadows as he walks towards her. It takes a degree of stubborn resolve to keep still as he stops, tilts her chin up with rough fingers and presses his mouth to hers.

“I hate it when you do that,” she tells him after he pulls away. 

“That why you’ve got a death grip on my neck, doll?”

She drops her betraying hands with a disgusted grunt and narrows her eyes as she says, “Fuck you.”

“No, doll, _I’m_ gonna fuck _you_ ,” he mumbles into her neck. “Don’t pretend you don’t love this, Lewis, your dripping onto your thighs.” His fingers find the wetness that has leaked onto her skin and trace it back to the source.

“Fuck you,” she repeats, but the venom in her voice is ruined by the gasp at the end.

“Bend over the couch.”

She does as he says, because he’s right about her dripping onto her legs and he’s right about her loving this and he’s right about the clothes she wore tonight, and he’s right about most things concerning her.

“You gonna spank me, Barnes? Gonna tell me off for keeping you waiting?”

She can hear his belt buckle and zip coming undone. “You’d like that wouldn’t you, sweetheart?”

His warm body behind her bare frame, his hot hands touching her back, the groan she can’t keep back, his fingers pushing into her, her grip on the couch cushions. His hand slaps the flesh of her ass and she whimpers obscenely, so he does it again, moving his fingers that are inside her with a cadence, and his hand lands on her ass again, and then he circles her clit, and smacks her again and he repeats and repeats, but never keeps any rhythm long enough, and she is panting and clawing the cushions.

“You getting’ ready to start beggin’, sweetheart?” he murmurs softly into her ear and then slaps her again, hard enough to make her scream this time.

“Hate you,” she grits out in between the pants.

“That’s a no then.”

He pushes another finger into her. The pain from the stretch and her slaps are delicious, and her legs are shaking as she rubs her breasts against the back of the couch in time with his fingers. Then he starts all over again; pinching her clit now, then slapping her while his fingers curl inside her, then biting her neck, then another smack and pressure on her clit and on and on and she isn’t even in control of the sounds she is making anymore – he has overcome her and slinked into her body and persuaded the pleasure out of her in a way she knows no one else ever could.

“Fuck, Barnes,” she screams and she hates him at the same time as he once again changes the rhythm just as she is about to come. “Oh, God, come on!”

Her ass throbs as his palm lands on it again. “What do you say, sweetheart?”

“I…”

“Yes?”

“Hate. You.” Her head buried in the cushion does nothing to mask the noises. She cries out again when he pinches her clit briefly, but again it’s not enough, and she sobs back the groans and her muscles are aching and _she_ _goddamn hates Barnes_. “Just fuck me!”

The hand that had been slapping her now throbbing ass skims up her ribs and starts on her nipples, and then she has to bite down on the cushion. He pinches her nipple fleetingly and then rolls is under his fingers as he presses on her clit hard, and alternates as she shakes beneath him and she’s pretty sure the people three floors down will be able to hear her.

“Barnes, fucking hurry up,” she gasps as her nipples is pinched again. “Hurry up and _fuck me_!”

She can feel his hot length against her back in a lull of his assault on her senses, and she is so out of it she isn’t even aware of how long it’s been there.

“What’s the magic word, doll?”

His fingers are still moving inside her and now he keeps curling them against her walls, and then pressing her clit firmly, and then repeating it, and then his hand leaves her nipples and slaps her ass once more, hard, and she screams.

“Please,” she nearly sobs.

His hand soothes over her tender and red skin. “What was that sweetheart? Couldn’t hear you.”

“ _Please_! Please just fuck me, Barnes, God.”

He leans forward and nuzzles her hair. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

His cock thrusts into her in one swift motion and she falls apart with racking sobs and shaking legs, screaming out curses and clawing the cushions in front of her. When she comes back from her high she can feel him inside her, hear his own pants of desire. His hands have abandoned her nipple and clit to graze over her waist and ribs, occasionally smoothing over the red of her ass.

“You like it when I spank you, huh, Lewis?” His voice hits her core again because it sounds absolutely wrecked. The smooth softness of his hands on her sore skin diverge from his unforgiving pace inside of her, and she feels the tightness building inside of her again only this time he is not playing a game with her.

“And you like kissing it better,” she manages to pant out.

His hand clenches on her hip. The other one snakes round and begins strumming on her clit again, but it’s too soon. She cries out sharply and reaches back to try and pry his hand away from the hypersensitive spot, but he uses his other hand to hold both her wrists at the small of her back, and there is nothing she can do but start screaming again as her legs shake and her core aches and he moves in her over and over until she is coming again, but even then his hand doesn’t leave her clit, and she sobs painfully as he keeps her orgasm rolling over her and over her until he cries out too and spills himself inside of her.

His hand finally falls off of her swollen clit and he slumps forward over her body, chest heaving and hot breath landing on her neck. After a few moments he is able to pull out of her and turn her, having to support her lax form, and drags her against him in a lazy kiss that she is too inebriated to stop.

“Told you I’d make you beg for it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!! I love to hear what you think in the comments :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wondering how/where bucky and darcy first meet in this au?? no??? well i've written it anyway. plus a little more of that #characterdevelopment

The first time she met Barnes was only a few weeks after she had moved from LA to Chicago, when she was still adjusting to the recent change in lifestyle. This was back when she was getting her footing in the criminal world, which was why Chicago had drawn her in; the amount of violent crime that the city saw would cover up a lot of the extortion and robbery that she initially planned to carry out, and most of the goddamn police were in either the Outfit’s or some street gang’s pocket.

Darcy had been having fun in her first few weeks; she had strolled into a random bar, had a few shots of vodka, turned a few heads, and then pointed a gun at the bartender and demanded cash from the till. As it turned out, that particular bar was run by the Latin Kings, so things got a little more interesting; shots were fired, chairs flung, glasses smashed. She had been standing amidst the chaos and finally _feeling;_ it didn’t matter what – fear, adrenaline, panic – because she was in charge of herself, and it was exhilarating. If she had died there and then, she would have been satisfied with the freedom and drama of her demise.

And then she had heard his engine. His stupid bike, that she had come to realise was the only thing he seemed to have any sort of positive feelings towards. He kicked the door in, guns drawn – she found out later on that the Kings owed him money, so he was on his way to shoot up the bar anyway – and shot her a lazy smile.

“Why don’t you leave the poor girl alone?” And then he started shooting.

Once the gang members inside the bar were all down – they both made sure there were no witnesses – Darcy had aimed her pistol at him.

“Who the fuck are you?”

His defining smirk had appeared. “Man of your dreams, sweetheart. James Barnes, happy to help.”

“You’ve got to be _fucking_ kidding me.”

“S’cuse me?”

“I don’t want your goddamn help! What is it with men ruining all my fucking fun?”

She kept her gun trained on him as she jammed the till open and scooped out the cash. Silence had hung incredulously for a few moments.

“I just saved your fuckin’ _life_ , sweetheart, the least you could do is thank me!”

That, she thinks, is what kept her coming back; his short fuse, his terse defensiveness, his burning anger that was barely contained beneath his surface.

“No, the least I could do is not shoot you. Outside,” she had gestured with the gun and followed him out to the street, where his bike was parked. “Keys.”

His laugh was menacing, but she had barely flinched. “You better think again, doll, if you think I’m gonna let you take my bike. Whoever the fuck you are, you ain’t getting’ my bike.”

She had kneed him in the groin and dipped her hands into his pockets while he was doubled over. The bike roared to life, and she gave him a wave even as he drew his gun.

“You fuckin’ bitch,” he roared, bullets raining on the tarmac behind her. “Motherfuckin’ bitch, I’m gonna get my fuckin’ bike back!”

His bike had been a fun joy ride, but motorcycles didn’t leave a lot of room for short skirts and heels. She hadn’t been that annoyed that he had tracked her down and stolen his bike back the week after, along with $2,000. That’s what started it, she supposes, the rivalry that inexplicably kept them crossing each other’s paths over and over: him being outraged that she stole his bike, and her being pissed that he took her two grand - at that point in her life, that was a lot of money.

In the beginning, he would try and bring her things; gifts, presents, favours – all kinds of different currencies for the same purchase, and she had let him know pretty quickly and not at all subtly that she didn’t want anything from him. Annoyingly she did, a lot of the time. He stole her some pretty nice necklaces and knives, but she had moved on from the part of her life where she owed men anything, so she would be damned if she accepted them as gifts. It didn’t stop her stealing them off of him later in their relationship, but what can she say? They’re both materialistic people with a streak of obstinacy that would have either of them killed before surrendering their pride.

The thought nearly draws a smile from her as she slinks through the shadows behind her mark’s apartment, because the only reason she’s breaking into this particular drug dealer’s residence is because one of his thugs punched her in the face last month in a sour drugs deal. Her lip was split for _days_ , and she’s stubbornly bitter about it.

She doesn’t know his name, only that he is a member of the Vice Lords, oversees the gang’s arms deals, and lives on the third floor. She uses the fire escape to climb up to his window; her movements are deft and distracted - the motions of someone at ease in their situation. She moves around unseen and becomes part of the ambiguity of what is just out of sight.

His window is alarmed, as is the whole apartment, but she knew this when she staked out the place the day after she was punched. The gloves slow her fingers slightly and take away some of the intricacy in her movements, but she has no time pressure, so she works slowly to disable the alarms. Like night driving, the unperturbed stillness of the moment calms her.

Once the alarm is dealt with, she slips in through the window, sealing the cool, shifting air of outside behind the glass as she moves through the dark apartment, gun drawn and mask pulled over her face. His apartment is, frankly, disgusting, and she’s glad she wears gloves for her line of work. There are half finished joints littering most surfaces, the off-white paper catching the yellow streetlamps from outside, and powder waiting in pots on what she assumes is the coffee table. A few guns sit on the table too, and there’s dirty clothes draped across the sofa and haphazardly strewn across the floor too. It reminds her of L.A., but she ends the thought before it can take over her calm precision.

Instead, she grits her teeth against the stench of drugs, and treads softly over to her target: a crate on the far side. Inside, there are over $20,000 worth of the gang’s weapons stock, and she smiles under the fabric of her mask.

They barely fit into the duffel she brought. She’s just placing the last semi-automatic into the bag when keys fumble in the lock and three men stumble in. She freezes; they haven’t seen her yet in her all black outfit, but she has to move before the spread out and surround her. She shoves the bag across the floor of the apartment towards the window, but the weight of the guns inside stop it moving very far. It doesn’t matter though; she will have to take all three men out at the very least to escape, so the bag can stay put for the moment.

Her movements have prompted a startled yell from the men. The first lunges forward as she tries to vault the couch, but she rolls out of his grip and sends an elbow to his throat. Once he is stunned by the pain, she shoves him back to give herself room, draws her pistol from her hip and shoots him twice in the chest.

But the other two are less clumsy and much faster. The second assailant has circled behind her while she shot the first, something she missed because of her mask. He grabs her from behind and knocks the gun from her hand and pins her arms back, and she’s a little confused about his method of incapacitating her until his friend steps forward and his fist drives into her abdomen. And again, and again, and again, until he’s got a nice rhythm going.

Things get a little distant. She wonders why they don’t just shoot her. But then there is a lull in the beating and she can hear her sobbing breaths that won’t let any air in, and she can hear them laughing. The man in front of her unbuckles his belt and undoes his zipper and she realises why they have stopped.

She is dimly aware of words being exchanged, and one of them removes her mask and tilts her chin up to look at her, but she concentrates on her hands. She gets the knife out of its sheath on her hip, turns it until it is pointing away from her, and then drives it backwards with all the force she can manage. Warm waves of blood soak her hands and wrists. Her hands are released instantly, and she stumbles forward unsteadily and drives the knife in between the last attacker’s ribs. He collapses, and she nearly follows him, but manages to catch herself on the wall.

She bends over, spitting up blood and gulps air into her body once she stops being winded. Her hands are shaking and her clothes are soaked in blood. Her abdomen is on fire, and she can’t stand up straight for a few moments. When she is done recovering, she picks up her gun.

“If you hadn’t taken my mask off, I wouldn’t have to kill you,” she tells the two men who are slumped in agony on the floor. “But I’d still do it.”

Two heads, two bullets.

When she eventually gets back to her penthouse she puts the guns into the vault straight away. Her black boots leave crimson marks on the ivory tiled floor that covers the whole space. She kicks them off in her bathroom, and then takes her jacket off, then her gloves, her black top, and then her trousers and then her underwear until there is a mess of black in the corner on the tiles that weeps red. She steps into the shower and turns the water on full, and closes her eyes.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay w this but u know how it is, existential crises wait for no man  
> thanks for all the lovely comments!! enjoy

At least two broken ribs, as far as she can tell. That’s what her goddamn revenge plot got her. She’s good at guessing the number of ribs from experience. She spends four days in bed with a painful, scarlet stomach that is hard to the touch and makes her cough up blood. She misses out on bounty on a rogue member of the Disciples that would have earned her $20,000, but instead is probably being spent on fucking cleaner fluid for Barnes’ stupid fucking _bike_.

On the second day, she’s bored. The third, she’s wondering why Barnes hasn’t texted her, and by the fourth, she’s pissed that he hasn’t called.

He got her a present once. A long time ago, when they first started sleeping together. She wouldn’t say he bought her the ring, because he almost definitely stole it. But he did press the small box into her hands when they were sitting side by side on the bed in room 505, thighs touching. She had had a run in with a street gang and been bed ridden for a week, and when she met him at their common ground apartment, lipstick covering her split lip and concealer patching over the black eye, he had pulled it from his pocket. She remembers that gave her that lazy smile and looked at her with something like pride, eyes flickering to the soft velvet box that revealed a delicate gold band woven into a simply designed ring when she opened it; his hands warm and sure as he slipped it onto the middle finger of her left hand.

She had rolled her eyes –laughed a little too, told him she could buy her own jewellery. He had tried to leave the room, storming off with his jacket slung angrily over his shoulder. She teased him for running away, leaving a job unfinished, riled him up until he was practically seething, ripping her top off and hiking her skirt up and shoving his pants down.

Her mistake was kissing him. She doesn’t know why she did it. He wouldn’t let it go either, that she leant forward while he was inside her, and pressed her lips to his, the first kiss they ever shared, and, as she vowed in response to his infuriating taunting, their last. She never mentioned the ring again to him, and he never asked.

On the fifth day, Barnes calls her.

“Thought maybe you’d been shot,” he tells her, “’cause you don’t seem to be taking advantage of the situation goin’ on with the Latins.”

At this, she sits up in bed, momentarily forgetting her injury, but is immediately reminded by the searing pain. She has to wait a few moments before she can speak.

“Lewis? You there-”

“I’m here,” she growls. “What situation? They get pulled by cops again?”

“The fuck have you been the last few days, Lewis? Thought you were meant to be a criminal. What kinda criminal in Chicago doesn’t keep up with gangs-”

“Just tell me what fucking happened, Barnes, before my patience wears out.”

“Only since you asked so _nicely_ , doll.” She can imagine him rolling his eyes. “The Kings got a big delivery in three days ago, real secret – only their Coronas and a few council members knew ‘bout it ‘cause its meant to be this new street drug that no other gang’s got yet, whatever. But someone on the outside knew and took out all 15 members who were in on the trade. So now the Kings think they got a traitor high up. At least council level, if not Corona.”

“Who intercepted the deal?”

“All I’ve heard is they were Russian. Seems to be a single player with a lotta ammo. Which is why I thought you woulda been in on it, doll, what with the Russian company you keep.”

She ignores that. “And the mole in the Kings?”

“How the fuck would I know? Not like I care anyway. Long as they’re goin’ to shit on the inside, makes their business easy pickings.”

Darcy agrees with him there. “Remember to stick to your turf, Barnes. I don’t want to see you trying it on in my territory.”

“Oh, the territory you’ve left completely open the past week, sweetheart?”

“It has never been left open, you prick. And you better hope you didn’t set foot in one of my banks.”

“Why d’you always have to threaten me, Lewis?”

“Cause you can’t ever seem to leave me alone.” She inspects her abdomen. It’s like some sort of impressionist art that she would steal; a livid mix of red and purple, as if she had been painted on with knuckles and fists and all that the final picture amounted to was some sort of unclear and undefined mass of colour.

“That’s cause we got unfinished business, sweetheart. Second pass. 505 at 11 tonight.”

She squints her eyes shut. “I can’t.”

“For fuck’s sake, Lewis, we’ve been over this playin’ hard to get bullshit. If you don’t wanna do the free passes then gimme my $9,000 and forget it, but don’t fuck around-”

“I’m not paying you back, dickhead,” she hisses. She can feel that she hesitates slightly before continuing, and she hates it. “I got in a fight. I’m a little out of action, is all.”

She can sense him trying to work out her pauses, her reluctance, her virtually undetectable verbal trips that only he would ever be able to ascertain.

“Who was it?”

She manages a disdainful laugh. “There’s no need to avenge my injuries, Barnes, as much as you’d fucking like to.”

A pause, and then he huffs angrily, “I don’t give a shit about that, sweetheart, I was askin’ in case I could clean up on the bounty that _you_ couldn’t manage.”

She swallows, and swings her legs off the bed, screwing up her face at the pain. “I know you hate hearing this, Barnes, but I can manage perfectly fine _without you_.”

“That’s great doll, cause I’m better off alone.”

“Just stay out of my territory,” she growls, and then hangs up.

She grabs the container of pills from her bedside table, swallowing them dry, and stands up. She has had quite enough of lying in bed and letting other people run the city. Besides, her preference is to let the guns do the hard work, not her body, so her ribs shouldn’t be an issue for what she needs to do today. While she gets used to walking again, she visits the vault she’d had installed at the back of her walk in wardrobe. After punching in the six digit combination and then the four digit one, the door releases.

The inside of the vault is similar in size to a guest room, but other than that it bears no likeness to a room designed to live in. Every surface is a cold metal. There are shelves stacked with safes for her more expensive acquisitions, like rare jewels, and duffel bags that contain either precisely counted and labelled amounts of cash or drugs.

The bag full of stolen guns sits just inside the doorway where she had dumped it four nights ago; an ugly black stain against the organized neatness of the rest of the vault. She hauls the bag further into the room, until it rests in the corner underneath the shelf. Her hand comes away slightly red from the dried blood that must be on the handle. She grits her teeth at the stupid weapons; she wants them gone as soon as possible.

Before she leaves, she checks the safe at the very back of the vault out of habit. Her apartment, while beautiful, is vague; it lacks photos or posters or cards – anything personal. It’s a deliberate decision in case she ever has visitors, but even if that wasn’t the case, she owns hardly anything sentimental anyway. The only things she keeps are locked away, inside her vast, stupid wardrobe full of pretty dresses, at the back of a vault that only she could ever open, inside a safe with a code only she knows.

She opens it now and stares at the box that sits inside for a moment, before impulsively reaching for it and opening it – she doesn’t know why, because she knows exactly what is in here, and the contents haven’t changed in three years.

She sees the photo first; a chubby girl with bangs and pigtails of about seven or eight, surrounded by other foster children who are all looking at the camera with the same plaintive resignation as they oblige whichever social worker is taking the picture. Under the picture there is a necklace that she hates; it’s a garish, ornate rectangular locket, and was probably gold in colour at some point. It’s empty inside, and she would never be seen dead wearing it, and there isn’t even any proof that it belonged to her mother, and she hates it even more because despite all that, she still can’t get rid of it. Next to the locket is the first hundred dollar bill she ever stole, the train and the bus tickets that got her from L.A. to Chicago, and a gold ring.

She snorts in disgust at herself and the box is slammed shut, then the safe, then the vault door, and then she’s standing alone in her decadent wardrobe in her black underwear and white skin and red stomach.

She grabs a bold red dress from the rail, because it matches her bruise, doses up on some more painkillers, and then she goes to meet the Irish mob to sell them some guns.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> now featuring even more backstory!!!!!!!!

She remembers the first time they came up with the idea of free passes. Well, she came up with it. And she doubts he actually remembers it, because he happened to be both high and drunk at the time, and could barely walk – which is exactly how the whole idea came about.

She had been extorting some rich broker in a hotel room, and then had driven home 3 million dollars richer. She had happened to take the longer route home, because she likes driving at night in the stillness, and she nearly hadn’t looked twice at someone being beaten up by a street gang. Nearly.

But her eye had caught on the silver glint of the knife, not because she was concerned, but merely because it stood out against the blackness of the street corner, and then she had seen a glimpse of his face, and before she really knew what she was doing, her foot was on the brake and her red Porsche was screeching to a halt in front of the mass of bodies and she had her gun in her right hand and the car door open.

“Hey!”

Her first shot was a warning; it found its target in one of their legs, and blood sprayed while the guy screamed in surprise.

“You shoulda kept fuckin’ drivin’, bitch,” he spat at her. They left Barnes and started circling her. He slumped to the floor, face bloody and eyes barely open partly, she thought, from swelling, and partly from whatever he was on.

She sighed at them, “This is a nice dress that I would rather not get bloody. Leave now and no one else gets shot.” Laughing, knuckles cracking, derogatory insults; all the clichés of the masculine ego. “Well, then, I won’t waste your time.”

She raised her pistol and shot the other three cleanly in their thighs; nothing too damaging, just painful flesh wounds that they all immediately shouted about, rounding on her while clutching their wounds.

“Get the fuck out of here before I shoot all of you in the fucking head.” None of them moved, so she cocked the pistol and fired another warning shot that hit the wall right next to the first one’s head. “I said fuck off.”

Once he decided it wasn’t worth it, the others folded. She watched them run erratically down the street before she holstered her gun and walked over to Barnes, her heels clicking on the bloodstained pavement.

“Barnes.” He grunted, but otherwise didn’t respond. “Get the fuck up. I nearly shot four people for your sorry fucking ass, and there are apartments right across the street.”

He managed to open his eyes, if only slightly due to the swelling of the beating he received, and tried to grin at her. His teeth were coated in blood. “Never knew you cared so much, doll.”

His words were barely decipherable, and she pretended she couldn’t understand him, so she kicked his thigh instead. “I said get the fuck up. You need to get out of here, and I’m not driving you anywhere while you’re covered in blood like that, so you better get walking.”

He struggled to sit up against the building behind him, groaning like the dramatic dick he was, and looked at her with flat eyes and pupils that had eaten up the colour of his eyes. It was like looking at a shark; she remembered thinking that about her own reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror in L.A.

“I’ll call the cops, grass you up.”

She had laughed at him, slumped in front of her on the floor, too high to stand and too beaten to walk.

“No, you won’t.” She turned away and had the car door open, one foot inside when she heard him choking; loud, wet coughs to try and get rid of the blood in his throat and the vomit from the drugs, and it was so familiar to her that she stopped in her tracks and was taken back three years, and she was crumpled on a dirty floor next to a decrepit toilet, heaving out her overdose alone, the hot wet tears of confusion and fear running with acidic vomit, and she was terrified.

She left the car door open and marched back to Barnes, and forced his body forward so he was bent over, and hit him on the back, hard, until he stopped gagging blood.

“What the fuck did you take this time?”

He didn’t answer, just groaned and spat blood. She figured she was going to have to clean blood out of her car anyway – not a massive inconvenience; it happened all the time, so she heaved him up to his feet. He was heavy and off balance, and bearing the brunt of his weight in heels wasn’t easy. He had slipped down a few layers of consciousness, so at least she didn’t have to put up with him taking the piss out of her efforts as she shoved him into the passenger seat.

She drove to a bar where the landlord owed her, dragged Barnes through to the back toilet with a quick exchange of words with the barman, and locked the door. Her dress was thoroughly ruined now; covered in a mixture of blood and vomit. She would throw it out later. As it was, she pushed Barnes’s broad shoulders until he was bent over the toilet and then left him there while she got water from the bar.

“What did you take?” she demanded when she got back. “Hey.” She slapped his cheek sharply, and he eventually scowled at her. “Heroin? Coke?”

“Dunno,” he mumbled, “someone musta put somethin’ in my drink.”

He turned and gagged again. When he was done, she grabbed his chin and looked at his eyes, still eaten up by black pupils. His face was coated in blood and his lip split from a punch. She lifted his shirt, and raised an eyebrow at the sight; that was gonna hurt like a bitch when he could feel again.

“Why were they trying to kill you? Looked like Vice Lords from what I could see, but I thought you were good with them?”

“Fuck if I know, doll.”

She gave him the pitcher of water. The first few gulps he threw up again straight away, but began drinking properly after a while.

“Why’re you doin’ this?” his voice was quiet and thick, tongue still numb and tripping over words.

She paused. She didn’t know. She had _no idea_ why she was spending what had been a lucrative evening shooting gang members, ruining her dress and holding back someone’s hair while they threw up their overdose.

“Because now you owe me, Barnes,” she had told him.

He had choked out a laugh. “’S’always a motive with you.”

“You’re not exactly in a position to judge, dickhead.”

He spat into the toilet once more and then pushed back and flushed it, sitting himself against the wall and closing his eyes. “So what, you want money?”

The way his eyes screwed shut and his fisted hands bracketed his temples and his chest heaved was like looking into the past; the disorientation and weakness and vulnerability of overdosing that could only be tempered by sitting alone in a locked room, back against the wall, eyes tight shut, nails digging into palms to make it real.

“I don’t want money,” she blurted out.

“Then what?”

Then what? She had to get something. That was how everything worked. Everything had a price. Like when she had stolen his money a few weeks ago and he tied her up on the bed in 505 and hadn’t let her come, and slapped her ass, and made her say she was sorry.

“You have to do what I say, when I say for a whole night.”

He was silent, and for a moment she though he had passed out again. “You wan’ me to be your bitch? You fuckin’ kiddin’?”

“I’m covered in your fucking blood and vomit, and this dress is Dior. Do you think I’m fuckin kidding?”

His eyes opened slowly. “One night?”

“Whenever I say. You have to drop everything. A free pass. I get to do anything and you can’t complain.” She paused, and then added, “Or you buy me out. That would always be an option.”

He had wiped a trickle of blood that had run into his eye. “Guess m’not really in a position to argue.”

She’s stacking the piles of cash she got for the stupid guns when he calls her for his second free pass. This time she doesn’t bother protesting.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for graphic violence and discussion of abuse in this chapter!  
> (soz about the lateness of this update but im a lazy shit)

“This is what you wanted to use your second pass on?” she yells at Barnes over the gunfire.

He sneers at her. “I got you for the whole night, doll, this is just a bit of foreplay.” Shards of glass spray over the edge of the bar they are crouched behind, raining down on their backs, and she shoves his arm away when he tries to cover her head.

“We’re gonna get shot by the fucking mob, you idiot!”

He had told her to meet him outside a block of apartments in the Southside. But instead of going inside, he drove them a few blocks away, the tires of his bike screeching to a halt outside a dimly lit doorway. Before Darcy could demand what was going on, he had already shouldered the door open and shot the two men just inside it, and she could do little but draw her own gun as bullets started flying.

The back door of what she now realises is a bar owned by the Outfit had started to draw attention; other gang members were beginning to close in from the outside, so she was forced to duck into the dim, smoky corridor and follow Barnes as he took a sharp left and burst into another room, shot the six gang members who were in the middle of a game of poker, and hauled two bags full of heroin over his shoulder.

With the back entrance completely covered, they pressed forwards into front of house, and just made it to the bar in time to dive behind it. Darcy, wearing nice underwear, a tight skirt and recovering from three broken ribs, is thoroughly pissed off.

“You got that little trust in me, sweetheart?” He returns shots over the bar.

“I’ve got no fucking trust in you!”

“I thought you hated the Outfit,” he protests.

She turns sideways and glares at him. “That doesn’t mean I want to get _fucking shot by them_!”

He squints at her like she’s just said that they should get married and elope together. “Thought this would be a bit of fun, is all. I wanted the heroin, and you get to shoot a few of ‘em.”

More glass explodes on top of the bar and she let out an enraged shriek. “But now they’re gonna see my face, idiot!”

“So?”

“ _So_ , I’m in the middle of a deal with Riccoletti, you fucking moron!”

He is frowning as he shoots a gang member who has crept around the bar and was raising his gun. “The gang’s chief of finance? What, you borrowin’ money from the Outfit?”

“None of your _goddamn_ business,” she seethes. She crawls forward to the edge of the bar, ignoring the shot of pain in her abdomen, and drags the arm of the dead gang member towards her until she can reach his head. She rips off the black woollen hat that had been covering greasy black curls, and takes the handgun he was using, retreating quickly. Her knife sings softly as she pulls it from her holster to carve two holes in the hat, and then she pulls it over her head, ignoring the disgusting scent of sweat and smoke. Barnes is knelt facing the bar, poking his head up to pick a few guys off at a time like he’s got all the fucking time in the world.

She swears at him, but he doesn’t hear her through the fabric covering her face and the din of their fight, so she just stands abruptly, her pistol in one hand and the guy’s magnum in the other, and the bullets find each target with practised ease; blood splatters the walls, glasses smash, the men scream and choke on their own blood as they crumple to the dirty floor, and she is reminded of when she first met Barnes in that bar so long ago.

He has stood up to join her in the midst of the chaos, and once it’s all over, and the only sound is the sickening gush of blood, they stand shoulder to shoulder and she can feel her heart beating and the high of fear and adrenaline intoxicating her.

She looks at him through her makeshift mask at the same time that her turns to face her. Her breath is hot against the insulating wool as his free hand raises in a mock of a gentle caress; instead he pulls the mask back, dropping it on the floor in the glass and blood.

“You should learn to have more faith in me, doll.”

“Faith in _you_? I’m the one who shot them all! You were too busy hiding behind the fucking bar!”

He shrugs, “I didn’t wanna get shot.”

She can’t even think of a response to him. She just fumes in silence and helps herself to one of the unsmashed bottles of vodka behind the bar, drinking it straight from the neck, and eyeing Barnes angrily. She should leave. She should kick him in the balls, steal the heroin and his bike, and leave his stupid, cocky, conniving ass alone in this stupid bar, because she was forced to put some sweaty gangster’s goddamn _woollen hat_ over her _face_ , and because this was so not what he had implied they would be doing over the phone.

And there lay the problem, the only thing stopping her walking out on him right away; the tenacious rush of adrenaline that wasn’t fading, because he was still looking at her, with hungry eyes that dropped heavily onto her body, and her stupid, relentless need to touch someone - anyone, but he would do - to be touched, to be held tightly, painfully, to feel a part of something, even if it was brief.

“What does it say about me that I could fuck you over this bar with dead bodies a few feet away?” He phrases it sarcastically, but she recognises the sincerity behind his question, because she is asking herself the same thing; because, despite their differences and their animosity, they are made out of the same pain and cruelty as each other.

The vodka burns her lips, her tongue, her throat, as she puts it down heavily on the counter and answers him, “That you’re desperate. And hard.”

Her eyes drop to his crotch. He looks at her with venom in his eyes and grabs the bags of heroin in one hand and her arm in his other.

“Only one who’s desperate is the one wearing a lace thong to a bar shoot up,” he spits out as he drags her back through the grimy corridors and out of the back door. “How long d’you spend figuring out what to wear for me?”

She wrenches her arm out of his grip and shoves his shoulder, sending him stumbling towards his bike. He drops the bags with a growl and turns to face her, hands in fists by his side.

“Don’t fuckin’ push me.”

“Why not? Not like you’re gonna do anything about it, Barnes. You’d never lay a finger on me, we both know it. On any woman, for that matter. Got a few mummy issues-”

His arm draws back, and for a moment she thinks he’s going to do it, she thinks he’s going to punch her right in the face, but his fist lands against the door behind her, buckling half of the frame.

“Shut the fuck up, Lewis,” he shouts. “You don’t think I notice how much you love getting hurt? Having me spank you in bed? Being in a bar full of men tryin’ to shoot you, and only getting turned on by it?”

His fist is still pressed against the wall behind her, his body straining towards her, and she tries to glare back at his anger unflinchingly, honestly, unabashedly, but all she can do is withdraw under his words.

“You think you got me all fuckin’ figured out, just cos you noticed I won’t hit a woman, huh?”

“You’d die to save a woman,” she spits at him. “That’s how fucked up you are. You wouldn’t even care who she was, as long as she had a pussy.”

He grabs her shoulders roughly, chest heaving as he glares down at her, but he doesn’t shake her or hit her, and part of her hates him for it.

“Better than wanting to be killed by a man.”

She can’t answer him, she just hits his shoulder again, and then again, but he catches her wrist tight in his hand, and all she can think about is the flicker of pain in his tight grip, and how she wants more, and how she hates him for picking up on it, and how hot his mouth is when he pins her to the door and kisses her.

He bites at her lips, maybe because he’s angry, and maybe in acquiescence to her pleasure in pain, she isn’t sure. She shoves his chest back either way, and his lips are gone from hers. His hand leaves the wall behind her, and she momentarily sees blood on his knuckles from where he punched the door, but then it is ghosting underneath her skirt, roughly shoving the stupid black lace aside and spreading the wetness up to her clit.

She tries to keep coherent and detached, but he knows her body and her pleasure so well, and it’s all she can do to hang onto his shoulders while his hand works inside her, muttering in her ear, telling her how angry he is, how much he’s gonna punish her. Before she can come though, his hand is gone, and he is pulling her roughly away from the wall.

“What the fuck? I’ll finish myself off if you don’t, Barnes-”

But he’s shoving her towards his bike, and she nearly caves into the moans that threaten to spill out of her mouth when she realises where he wants her. His eyes flicker around the alley once and then his hands are on her again, insistent, hot, restless, pulling her with him as he straddles the bike, hiking up her skirt to her waist, freeing his cock from the confines of his jeans, grasping at her breasts and her ass, until she swings her leg over the bike with her back to the handlebars so that they are chest to chest, and he finally pulls her hips down and buries himself inside her.

“Gonna think about this every time I ride my bike now, sweetheart,” he tells her into the skin of her neck, biting down hard as he does so and pulling her hair sharply to make her groan as he knew it would. “Gonna think about you riding me, being wet for me,” he pants, pinching her breasts, “about you wanting it rough.”

“Shut the fuck up,” she whimpers, slamming down on him harder.

“Careful, doll, you’ll knock the fuckin’ bike over.” His calloused fingers seek out her clit and she moans loudly in anger and lust.

“Like you weren’t hard the minute I got out my car,” she hisses, clawing at his neck, his back, his arms.

He doesn’t answer; he only brings his hands to grip each side of her ass and drive her pace harder and faster, thrusting his hips up to meet her while he slams her down onto him. She’s used to him – they’ve fucked more times than she’d care to count – but this angle and the pressure of his hands forcing her ass down and forward is stretching her, eliciting a calescent burn inside of her that’s as painful as it is pleasurable, and when his hand falls sharply down on her ass cheek, she comes apart. Her nails leave red scratches on the bare skin of his neck and arms, as she knows his grip on her hipbones will leave red marks as he buries himself inside her and comes with a string of curses.

There is only their breathing in the dark alley. He sighs against her shoulder, and she can’t tell if it’s contented or dissatisfied. His hands move away from her hips, but her top catches on the watch on his wrist and lifts up, and before she can shove it back down his eyes have fallen to the dark purple bruising that litters her abdomen.

“What’s that?” He is quiet; surprised even, which is worse than when he was yelling, because she can’t hide behind the loud words and the physicality of a fight, and he is still _inside_ of her, and her arms are still draped over his shoulders, and his eyes are inches away.

“Nothing,” she tries, and pulls her top down before climbing off of him and readjusting her underwear and skirt.

“That why you disappeared for a week?”

She looks back up at him, staring him dead in the eye. “It’s nothing, Barnes, just a few bruises.”

“Don’t treat me like a fuckin’ idiot, that’s two broken ribs, maybe three,” he fires back angrily, doing up his jeans and standing from the bike. “I know what a beating looks like, Lewis.” Not for the first time, she almost wonders about the story behind words like that because with him they are never just a throw away comment; there is always sincerity behind them, an assurance of his own pain, and she feels a whisper of kinship, of similarity, of affinity before she quells it down.

“Why do you care?” she snaps.

He pauses, eyes flickering down, and ordinarily when they were arguing, it would be to her breasts or her legs, but now she feels his gaze on her stomach.

“You let me drag you out here,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing, but he’s agitated; he paces, hands clenching in fists again. “Christ, you let me fuck you on a motorbike, Lewis, didn’t that fuckin’ hurt?” Then he lets out a bitter laugh. “Oh, I forgot, if it did hurt, that probably just got you off quicker, right?”

“Get the fuck over yourself, I got punched a few times – who the fuck cares? I can do what I want, Barnes, you’ve got no claim on me.”

“I know I’ve got no fuckin’ claim on you, but you’re-” He cuts himself off and looks even angrier than before.

“But I’m what?” she demands. “I’m not anything to you!”

“You know what? Fuck this. Someday someone’s actually gonna shoot you Lewis, and you’re gonna die alone, cause I’m not gonna fuckin’ hang around and watch you destroy yourself.”

She wants to gape at him; to react, to gasp, to laugh, to do something, because he has never spoken to her like this, but she can’t let herself, so she just strides forward until she is right in front of him, of his heaving chest, his incensed eyes, flared nostrils.

“I haven’t come this far,” she tells him, “to destroy myself. So fuck _you_ , and your fucking arrogant protectiveness.”

He looks her in the eye for a few moments; she counts the breaths because she feels so vulnerable but she won’t lose to him, she won’t back down, she won’t let him think he knows her better than she knows herself.

“How did you kill him?”

It isn’t the response she expected, but she answers without missing a beat. “I shot them.”

She can see the reaction in his eyes when she says _them_ , but he doesn’t comment on it.

“Good.”

Then he backs away and climbs on his bike, starts the engine, and for a moment she thinks he’s just going to pull away and leave her there, but he sits, adjusting the throttle, waiting for her, the engine throbbing steadily. She pulls her top down again firmly, then sits behind him and finds the excuse to hold on to him a little tighter through his sharp turns, to rest her head against his shoulder because of the rushing wind, to brush her lips to his neck because of the way his heartbeat feels under her palms.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> time to exposition the fuck outta this woowwowwoooo

Darcy is up shit creek without a paddle. Hell, she doesn’t even have a goddamn _boat_. To put it plainly, Darcy is fucked. Well and truly fucked. And in her experience, being fucked is either getting it on with Barnes until her legs shook, or being violently killed by the Italian Outfit, and unfortunately, right now, it’s shaping up to be the latter.

“I don’t care what Delarosa said. You owe me $500,000,” she says, gripping the phone until her knuckles are white.

“Yeah, that ain’t gonna happen, baby,” the voice drawls back at her.

God, she hates the Latin Kings. She should have known better than to take bounties from them, especially bounties that she’s counting on for other business, because this is what the Kings _did_ ; they dealt _dirty_.

“Why not?” Her voice is ice with tremors of anger beneath it, waiting to splinter the surface of calm. “It was two clean jobs. No witnesses, no cops.”

“Listen, baby, I don’t know any more than you do, alright, I just know you ain’t gettin’ any money.”

“Stop calling me baby,” she hisses, jaw clenching. “I’ll settle for half.”

“Not gonna happen.”

She can’t tell know whether he’s talking about calling her baby, or about her money. All she can feel is her heart that’s thumping in her chest and her tempered breathing. “Just let me talk to Delarosa-”

“Look, baby, honey, I got other stuff to do. You ain’t getting’ your money, let it go.” And then he hangs up.

She sits on her bed for a while, gripping the phone to her chest, eyes shut, counting the seconds while she breathes. Her mouth has gone dry. She crosses the room and pours herself a drink of vodka that slices sharply through the dull haze in her mouth and stomach, and after ten minutes her hands are level.

She dials Tobias’ mobile, and the Irish mobster picks up on the third ring.

“Lewis,” he sounds genuinely surprised, but no less guarded, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I’m calling in a few favours.”

A pause, and what could be a laugh. “A few? How many am I supposed to owe you?”

“Tobias, don’t fuck around. Danny Grillo cost you more than a few favours.”

There’s a weighted pause. “You go down with me if you bring that up.”

Her breathing is rising again as she snarls, “I don’t have time for this, you prick. I need money, now.”

 “I don’t do that anymore.” His voice is measured, calm, infuriating. “I’m in a police programme for civilian protection.”

“You- Are you _fucking_ kidding me?” she screeches. “I don’t give a fuck, _you owe me_! You must have _something_ left, you piece of shit-”

“I don’t do that anymore,” he repeats, tones of anger creeping into his words.

“Tobias, you son of a bitch, I don’t care what kind of goddamn deal you made with the cops, I need money now. I’ll even pay you back, alright, just loan me something-”

“I said I can’t help! Look,” he lowers his voice, “I can’t get you money, but if you’re in deep, I laid a trail of safehouses going out of Chicago-”

“I’m not a fucking coward,” she growls.

“Just listen! Before I got out, I was prepared, alright. They go all the way up Canada. All you’d need is an ID to get over the border.”

“Oh, go fuck yourself, Tobias.”

“It’s better than being murdered,” he shoots back at her tersely. “That’s all I can do for you. I’ll send you the details.”

“Tobias, _wait_ -”

But the line is already dead. Darcy lets out an infuriated scream and throws her glass of vodka across the room, crumpling back against the wall as she tries to control the gasps of breath that won’t stop heaving her chest, because she knows she only has one option now.

She jumps dramatically as her phone starts ringing in her hand. It’s not Tobias, or the Kings. It’s Barnes.

“ _What_?”

“Jocie’s bar, half an hour.”

“Not now, Barnes,” she growls.

“You know, I’m getting tired of you playin’ hard to get, sweetheart.”

“I’m not playing a _fucking_ game, Barnes!”

“Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.”

She gulps in a few breaths before answering, “I’m about two seconds from coming to find you and stabbing you in the fucking neck.”

“Fuckin’ hell, Lewis, calm down,” he huffs. “You know the rules, either come and meet me or pay up.”

“I don’t have time for your stupid goddamn _rules_ , Barnes, this is time sensitive!”

“What is?”

“I’ve got- work to do.”

He pauses briefly, and she nearly hangs up. “What sort of work, doll?” he asks slowly. “Is this to do with Riccoletti? You planning on robbing the Outfit?”

The way he sees inside of her makes her stomach twist uncomfortably, and she hates it.

“I haven’t got time for this,” she hisses.

“Sweetheart, robbing an Italian gangster is not time sensitive.”

And she explodes, “I’m not robbing him, you prick, I’m killing him!”

There’s a pause. “The fuck are you talkin’ about?”

“Just leave me alone!”

“You can’t kill the Italian’s second in command. They’ll skin you alive, and that ain’t an exaggeration.” His voice is loud now, growing in size as his words press harder and harder into her head.

“Oh, _really_?” she seethes. “I’m not doing this for a kick, you fucking idiot-”

“Then why the fuck _are_ you? You just plain fuckin’ _stupid_ , doll? What possible reason do you have for wiping off a _second in command_ -”

“I owe him money!” she snaps.

His stunned silence is deafening. “How much?”

“Why do you give a shit? It’s none of your business.”

“I’m tryin’ to help you out!”

Her fist bangs against the wall once, twice, and she bites her lip. “$750,000.”

There’s a laugh at the other end, but its brittle and tense. “Are you fuckin’ joking? How in the fuck do you owe him that much?”

“The Kings played me,” she snarls.

“Fuckin’ Christ,” he mutters under his breath, and then his voice is quick, words tumbling out over themselves in a manner she has never heard from his lazy drawl. “You’re not gonna walk away from this, Lewis. I mean, even if you manage to put a bullet in him, what the fuck about the rest of the Italians, huh? They’re gonna want blood. They’re gonna want _your_ fuckin’ blood!”

“You think I’m an idiot? I know that!” She drags in a breath, squeezing her eyes shut and leaning her head back against the wall. “But if I don’t shut Riccoletti up now, I’m gonna be dead by the end of the week. He’s the only one who knows my face. I’d rather take my chances.”

“This has gotta be the dumbest fuckin’ thing you’ve ever done!”

 “Stop acting like you’re so above me! We both play to survive, Barnes. This is how I survive this week,” she hisses.

“And what about next week? You can’t be this goddamn reckless all the time! This is about your stupid _fuckin’_ death wish, and this time you’re actually gonna get killed - you’re gonna get _worse_ than killed, Lewis, they’re gonna fuckin’ keep you around and do what they want to you, and you’re not gonna be able to sweet talk your way out of it!”

She squints her eyes shut, and ignores the twists in her stomach. “You gonna miss me if I get shot?”

“They ain’t gonna shoot you, Darcy! They ain’t gonna make it clean, they’re gonna torture you and then leave your rotting body in an alleyway!”

Her eyes are wet. “As long as my shoes don’t get ruined.”

“Look, just stop and _think_ for a second-”

She hangs up the phone. The wall behind her is unyielding and cold, and she spends a few moments sagged against it, until her eyes are dry and her heart stops betraying her and the angry haze recedes.

Then she gets to work.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well ladies and gentlemen and all my pals on the rest of the gender spectrum, we have reached the point of no return that this whole "piece of writing" as i like to call it.,,, is based on. enjoy my hard work, painstaking word choice, detailed character development and hisotry all 4 free !!!!!!! enjoy, much love as always xo

She jumps when the door bursts open, spilling a cacophony of music and voices from the bar out into the dirty alley where she waits in the shadows. It’s not Riccoletti. The figure stumbles away from her towards the end of the alley, where he is illuminated by the yellow streetlamp, and Darcy briefly sees the gun tucked into his jeans, and his greasy, black hair before he turns left and is swallowed by darkness again. Her mask is pulled tight, her clothes are black, her gloves cover her hands. The only part of her exposed are her eyes, straining widely in the gloom to focus on the nondescript back exit of the Outift’s bar. She knows Riccoletti is inside.

Darcy eases her leg back, bending the knee and then straightening it several times. This is why she usually leaves the sniper work for Barnes to pick up on – she hates waiting. The constant anticipation drains her, shreds her nerves to bits, makes her muscles cramp and itch to move. Barnes never does that. He once lay on a rooftop for 6 hours waiting for a hit.

Her head leaps up from where it had begun to sag down as the door eases open again, and Riccoletti steps over the threshold, and this is it, it’s just one clean shot, just one bullet, one human, and then she is free again. One deep breath to steady her shaking hand, another to slow her racing mind, and she aims the pistol at the back of his head.

She pulls the trigger as the door flies back open.

The bullet meant for Riccoletti lands in the brick to the right of his head as her body involuntarily jumps at the sudden movement, and she swears violently as the man who should have been dead swings round at the sound of the gun, followed by the three other men who pour out of the exit, guns cocked, yelling at her, and then they start shooting.

“ _Fuck_ ,” she screams, pressing back behind a dumpster, then darting forward to return fire. She thinks she hits about two of them, but they’re being quickly replaced, and doubled, and tripled in their numbers as they swarm out into the alley, and Darcy knows this is how she dies - amid gunfire and shouting and chaos, and she should be content, like she was that first time in the Chicago bar where she first met Barnes, but she _isn’t_. She wants to prove him wrong. She wants to see him again, to laugh at his stupid idea that she has a death wish. She wants his anger at her recklessness, she wants the way he would never take it out on her, she wants the burn of his stubbled jaw against her skin, she wants the smell of his cigarettes, she wants the way he makes her feel alive.

She digs her second gun from the waistband of her trousers, firing both guns as she skirts around the edge of the dumpster and starts running. Bullets fly past her and she can do little but run and hope, returning shots over her shoulders without looking back. She can see the entrance of the alley, and the street beyond, but she can also see the two men coming at her from the left. She shoots at them, and one drops back, but the other keeps going until he can grab her, and they struggle as she tries to move her gun to point at him while he tries to wrench it out of her grip.

She knees his crotch, he punches her stomach, she kicks his shin, once, twice, before he manages to twist her right arm until she can feel it about to break, and then his other hand is reaching for her mask, and she screams in anger, but any movement she makes will break her own arm, and before she can try and knee him again, her mask is gone.

She slams her forehead into his nose, feeling hot blood cover her hair, and the grip on her arm is relaxed slightly, enough for her to yank it free and stumble back from him, and she has a fleeting moment of euphoric victory as she looks at the blood gushing from his nose, glistening in the yellow light.

The light. Her mask, on the floor. The streetlamp above her. The alley full of gang members, all looking at her, at her face, at her blue eyes, at her dark hair, at her unmistakable identity lit up by the light. Then one of them raises his gun again, and she’s turning to run, but as she’s sprinting she feels something hit her shoulder, like someone smashing a baseball bat into her back, and then searing, hot pain blooming across her collarbone, but she’s at the entrance of the alley, so she turns right and _runs_.

The car she hired is only a hundred metres down the road, but the bullets have already started flying again and the blood on her forehead keeps getting in her eyes. She dodges between parked cars to cover from the bullets, but the owners of the guns are gaining fast.

Her boots mark out a steady rhythm on the concrete as she sprints the last stretch of road before slamming into the side of her car, crying out in pain as the impact resonates through her collarbone and desperately digging the keys from her zipped pocket. The back window explodes under gunfire, showering her in glass, and she finally manages to unlock the car, throw herself into the driver’s seat and roar down the empty street.

With the immediate danger subsided, the pain from the gun shot starts becoming overwhelming, and she knows enough to realise that the amount of blood soaking her clothes and arm is serious. She wails as she drives one handed, foot never leaving the gas, knowing the gang will have turned to their bikes immediately. If she weren’t shot, she wouldn’t risk returning to her apartment for a week. But black spots are dancing across her vision, and she remembers with a wave of nausea that her face has been seen anyway, so she floors the car again until she reaches her building.

The feeling of nausea is apparently not just a feeling; she throws up violently as she stumbles from the car, and when she tries to open her eyes again the black spots are everywhere. She falls to her knees on the curb. She gags again, but this time she can taste blood, and now she knows she won’t make it. She won’t even make it inside. There’s a rushing in her ears, and her lungs are heaving like she just ran for hours, and she can’t do it, she’s falling, she’s dying.

And oddly, she feels guilt. Maybe she was reckless after all.

“Barnes…”

She slumps backwards against the side of the car. He was right, and now the delicate, stupid, safe balance they created between them is ruined. With her being dead, who’ll steal his money just to piss him off? Who will he bother when he’s bored at night after robbing a bank? Who will rival him in crime in Chicago? Who will he fuck on his motorbike in dark alleys?

“ _Lewis_!” It’s a sharp demand in the still air, biting through the haze in her mind.

Death really is changing her perspective on things, if she is now conjuring up his voice in her stupid head. “Sorry about this,” she murmurs. “I only just realised we fit.”

“ _Lewis, you fuckin’ idiot, get up!”_

She can feel herself slipping, fading, falling, and she feels regret.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we go have some resolution to the tension and then a little more tension just to be on the safe side.   
> thank you so much to everyone for their lovely comments!! i love hearing what you all think every chapter!!

When she wakes, she screams. Her left shoulder is on fire, roaring, searing, stabbing fire, but she is somehow alive.

“Darcy.” The voice is right, but the word and the tone is wrong. “Stop fuckin’ screaming, would you?” He’s speaking in quick, hushed bursts, nothing like his usual lazy drawl.

She sucks in breaths until she isn’t crying out, then she opens her eyes. She’s in her own bed, her apartment is dark and Barnes is peering at her with an expression she’s never seen before.

 “What the fuck,” she whimpers, but she doubts its intelligible as words.

“You’re gonna be okay. You’re okay. Sh, take it easy, you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

She struggles to sit up, crying out again at the pain, but eventually propping herself against the headboard with his help. His hands are soft against her body, his voice low and urgent, his presence overwhelming in the darkness.

Through her heavy tongue she tries to form the words, “What happened?”

“You got shot.” He says it with a look on his face that she can’t determine, and there is a weighted pause where he just looks at her before whispering, “You gave up in the street.”

“Didn’t want to...” The pain is sapping her attention; she can barely think, barely remember running for her life, bleeding on the curb, thinking of Barnes.

“I carried you in here and got the bullet out and stitched you up, but you lost a lotta blood. You’re gonna be weak for a while.”

 “My apartment?” she grates out.

He casts a furtive glance over his shoulder and then gives her a look. “I told you I knew where you live.”

“You were following me?”

His face twists. “Waiting for you.”

Another glance around, and then he stands and moves to the window, peeling back the curtain an inch to look outside. His face captures some of the yellowing streetlight from outside, and suddenly it feels like her whole body has clamped down and rushed into itself as she relives the night; the streetlight, the alleyway, Riccoletti, her mask-

She swears violently.

Barnes turns sharply and marches over to her. “We haven’t got any more morphine, we’ll have to pick some up on the way-”

She shakes her head. “Not the pain.” She closes her eyes, but she can still feel his gaze on her. Then his hand, on her good shoulder, soft, warm, offering her comfort and reassurance that she doesn’t deserve, and she nearly breaks. “They saw my face,” she breathes.

He stays silent for a few moments, and she opens her eyes. His head is bowed, one hand in a tight fist by his thigh as he hisses, “Fuck.”

She looks at him properly for the first time, her eyes having adjusted to the darkness, and she sees the dark patches of blood on his white shirts and bruises on his knuckles and a spray of blood on his face.

“What did you do?” she asks quietly. He presses his lips together and glances behind him again. “Tell me.”

He pulls away from her abruptly, and now she can see the pistol in his waistband, and there’s so much blood on his shirt- and a _stab wound,_ still leaking blood from his right side as he paces restlessly to the window again.

“You’ve been stabbed! Who the fuck stabbed you?” she yells, straining against the pain to lean forward, towards him, she wants to touch him, to clean him, to feel his skin.

He looks at her with dark and wild eyes. “Who do you think?” He strides across the room to a pair of bags and rummages around in them as her brain tries to catch up, returning to her bedside and holding out a black hoodie.

“Not until you tell me what the fuck is going on, Barnes.”

If she hadn’t been injured, she would have decked him round the head. He chews his lip. His uncharacteristic silence is unnerving.

“I shot him.”

There’s a beat of weighted silence.

“You what?”

He squares his shoulder, jaw tensing and fists balling up. “I stitched you up, then went back to finish him off. I didn’t know you’d been made. I thought I could still save your identity.”

“You shot Riccoletti.” He nods mutely, his whole body straining against the fact itself, and she realises he looks scared. Terrified. Guilty. “You stitched me up, and then shot him… for me.” She can’t make herself look away from his eyes; they are locked together.

“I ain’t gonna apologise-”

“I didn’t- I know.”

“What happens now?”

“They’re going to kill us.”

“I’m not gonna let them kill you, Lewis,” he says, like she’s stupid. “We can still get away, if we leave now- you lost them on the way here, and I wore a Kings jacket so they’re a few hours behind us anyway.”

“Leave?” she blinks at him. “As in leave Chicago?”

His eyes are vulnerable, wide and panicked, a deer in the headlights. “It’s the only way we make it through this.”

The idea of leaving Chicago tears through her. This is her home. This is the only place she’s ever been comfortable. Her whole independent life has been created here; her business, her skillset, her reputation, her contacts – years of work and toil would be for nothing. Running away just like she did from L.A., when she was vulnerable and broken.

“ _We_? What you think we’re a done deal now? And what the _fuck_ , Barnes, you want to just _give_ _up_ everything-”

“It’s not giving up, for fucks sake! Its surviving!” He starts pacing again. “You didn’t move here from L.A. for the scenery, did you? You moved because you couldn’t survive whatever the fuck happened to you in L.A.!” She flinches. “And I did the same from Brooklyn. That’s what we do! This isn’t any fuckin’ different.”

She tries a different approach. “But they didn’t see your face! You don’t need to run, do you?”

His eyes, which had softened, flash with anger again as he runs a hand through his hair roughly. “You can’t stay here.” His fists are clenched by his side. “And you ain’t gonna survive alone with that,” he gestures to her shoulder.

It’s a reflex when she bites out, “I don’t need your fucking help, Barnes!”

“Really, sweetheart? Because without my help, you’d be lying dead in the street right now!”

“What, so you’re just going to run away with me? We’re going to drive away and start a new life together, get a house, a job, join the neighbourhood watch or something?”

“When are you gonna stop being so fuckin’ stubborn?”

He is pacing restlessly, and she has never seen him look this lost. Even when he’s high or beaten, he still has a cockiness to his attitude. But now, she thinks, he looks a mess, with blood coating his shirt and bare arms, and his usually slicked back hair in complete disarray, and his eyes that are always angry or hard or dark, but never _scared_ like they are now. He has come to her side, and looms over her in the darkness. She does her best not to shrink back, not out of fear, but because he is so persistent and she can feel all her arguments and excuses being worn away by how he’s looking at her.

“Cut the bullshit, okay, I can see you’re scared- _no_ , just shut up for one goddamn minute, alright? They ain’t gonna take long to find you, and you know what they do to you ain’t gonna be pretty. And I ain’t goin’ anywhere either, so whatever they do to you, they’ll do to me as well. We have to leave now. I don’t care where we go. As soon as your shoulder gets better, you can fuck off and leave me for dust. But I’m not gonna leave you here to get killed by the mob. So put the fuckin’ hoodie on, tell me where your guns are, and let’s get go.”

She looks at him for a beat while the idea settles in her mind, clicking into place and arranging itself amongst her thoughts. Her hands are trembling, and she hopes he doesn’t notice in the dark. “Guns are in the vault. It needs my fingerprint.”

He stills for a moment, she thinks she hears him take a deep breath, and then he’s grabbing the hoodie and helping her into it. His hands are on her again, ghosting over her with a gentleness and concern that makes her stomach twist as he helps her out of bed. His arm wraps around her waist to help her walk, and stays there while she opens the vault. She sags against the wall as he stuffs guns and knives and ammo into one duffel bag, filling a second with stacks of cash. She looks at the rest of her cash and weapons on the shelves; her whole livelihood and business. Not enough to pay back Riccoletti, and now useless all because a bunch of men fucked her over and didn’t pay her for her job. She tastes bitterness in her mouth.

He zips up the bag. “Let’s go.”

“Wait-”

“Darcy, _now_.”

She shoves his arm away and hobbles forward, using the shelf to propel her along to the back wall, where the enters the combination for the small safe that she keeps there. She grabs the box inside and when she turns around, he is already there, his arm around her, and he’s warm, and he has slung all the bags on his other shoulder, and she grips the box until her knuckles go white and concentrates on the feel of his skin, because they are the only two things she has left that are certain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BOOM. act 2 begins #roadtrip #sharingabed  
> thank you all for reading!! xoxo


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is very late but you know how it is when you procrastinate. Shit doesn't get done ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Anyways here is another chapter!!

He looks at her sometimes, when he is driving the car they stole. They had to leave his bike and her Porsche behind. She closes her eyes against the pain. He realises they are being tailed when they clear the city, and she sees his hands tighten on the steering wheel, but there’s nothing they can do but keep driving out of Chicago, into the unknown, away from the lights. Even now, there’s a part of her that comes alive because of the burn in her shoulder, a part of her that screams and cries not to leave her city, her home, a part of her that whispers that she is a coward, she is running away, she should face her death. It takes a long time for the lights of the city to fade in the car’s wing mirror, but when they do, Darcy feels terrified and exhilarated and numb all at once, and it’s not unfamiliar.

Barnes fidgets in his seat, alternating glances between the mirrors and her. After two hours, in a small town to the west of Chicago, he guns the car down empty streets and takes turn after turn, eventually screeching to a halt in a deserted garage and switching off the engine. They wait in silence for a long time; she isn’t sure how long because all her energy is focused on not crying out from the building pain in her collarbone, but at some point he presses a gun into her hand and tells her to wait there.

When he returns, he carries a bag full of painkillers and medical supplies. He gives her morphine, and then hands her a small bottle of vodka with the lid already uncapped and peels back her hoodie to expose the wound. He douses it in antiseptic and she hastily downs some vodka, aware that she is crying out but unable to stop. She tunes out his work the best she can, trying not to make it harder for him than it already is, and the vodka bottle is completely empty by the time he has finished cleaning and bandaging the wound. He gives her more painkillers, then spreads his leather jacket over her and turns the heat up high in the car as he starts driving again. No one appears to be following them as they continue west.

The first place they stop is 7 hours later in Sioux Falls. He finds a motel and pays in cash while she waits in the car. She sleeps fitfully in the small bed, and wakes, sweating, at 11:09 PM. The room is dark, and for a moment she is utterly disorientated and nearly starts panicking because the suffocating darkness feels like the apartment in L.A., and _he_ is going to stumble towards her any minute, angry, high, violent-

But then she looks to her left and she can see Barnes, hunched over the tiny desk in the corner.

“Barnes?”

He jumps slightly. “Lewis.”

She doesn’t know what to say to him next. “Are you …okay?” She winces at that, and hopes he can’t see her expression in the dark.

“Am I- I’m fine, doll,” he shakes his head, and then stands, drifting towards her. “I need to change your bandage. How’s the pain?”

“Better. You give me more morphine?” A nod. His hands press lightly to her shoulder, drawing back the clothing and then beginning to change the dressing. “What are you doing?” She eyes the desk.

“Tryna work out where we’re goin’.”

She sucks in a deep breath, and then another, because this is fucking terrifying – they don’t even have a plan. This is uncharted territory, literally and figuratively, because despite living in the same city and pursuing the same profession they have not once worked together, and she has no idea how this works.

It blossoms in her mind quickly. The memory of her phone call with Tobias. His safehouses. She glances around the room and sees her phone resting on the bedside table. All she needs is to wait a few days until Barnes has patched up her shoulder a bit better, then she would be fine on her own, just needing cash to buy new clothes and a car and then she could probably make it to Canada in a few days, a week if the mob sent people to follow her. No reason to stick around in some poor excuse for a team when she could be making ground on her own.

It’s the sensible thing to do. The most logical plan. In fact, in her situation, it’s a fucking miracle, and she shouldn’t even need to think about it. She has cash. She has weapons. The car shouldn’t be an issue. All she would need to do is wait until Barnes went out for supplies, or took a turn sleeping-

“You alright?” He’s looking at her, hands stilling on her shoulder, on her skin, against her pulse. 

It’s such a simple plan, she tells herself. Much safer to be alone. No one to let you down, no one to trap you, no one to betray you, no one to hurt you-

“I have details for safehouses up to Canada,” she blurts out. “In my phone.”

She waits for the rush of regret and self-hatred, the feeling of being caged in some sort of agreement with him; her words, despite being uttered between her bloodstained lips in a dark motel room, representing a commitment to each other that they haven’t managed in years of knowing each other. She waits, but it doesn’t come. All she feels is the pain in her shoulder, a need to stretch her legs, brush her teeth, a slight chill on her bare arms, and the weight of his gaze on her.

“Why?”

She’s not sure he means to say it aloud, and she can’t quite tell whether he’s asking why she has the plans or why she told him.

“Tobias told me to leave. Couldn’t bail me out, so told me to get out of Chicago instead.”

He considers it for a second. “Alright.”

When she looks back to him, his focus is back on her wound, but she thinks his shoulders look a little less tense, thinks his mouth looks a little less tight, but she can’t quite see, and suddenly she is so fucking fed up of all the fucking ambiguity; the quiet conversations in half light, the words whispered under cover of the early hours of the morning, the murky yellow of streetlamps the only thing attempting to dissolve the blackness of night, though never succeeding. In this moment of frustration, she leans forward, dislodging his hands from her skin, biting back a groan, and flicks on the bedside lamp which immediately floods the small room with pale light. They both blink at the sudden change, and when she looks at him again she can appreciate how exhausted he is; his eyes are bloodshot, sweat beading on his forehead, skin hallow and pale, blood still darkening his shirt, and she suddenly remembers he’s been fucking stabbed.

“You’ve been fucking stabbed,” she says.

All he does is shrug, not out of cockiness like he usually does, but rather born from a stage of exhaustion that leaves no room for anything other than one focus point; his being her shoulder, she guesses. She lets him finish dressing the new bandage, and then swings her legs out of the bed, holding back groans of pain for him rather than herself.

“Take your shirt off,” she orders once she’s sitting next to him. He doesn’t argue, dropping the soiled fabric on the floor.

She sucks in a breath at the sight of his torso, smooth golden skin interrupted by a messy gaping wound on the left side of his ribs. He’s put a few stiches in himself to stop the bleeding, but as she well knows, stitching up your own skin is hard. She drops to her knees before him, eyes level with the cut, hands resting on his thighs for balance, and there is something powerfully intimate about the position. She looks slowly up his body to find him already gazing at her, and with the lamp on, his expression is lit up to her, and despite his pain and exhaustion and fear clouding his expression, she thinks she has never seen his eyes so open as they are now. She thinks she could see into his soul, if they had them, into the very core of his existence, and knows without a doubt, as his hand moves to cover her own over his leg, that he can see right back into her.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so so much for all the lovely comments and kudos :) enjoyyyyy

She lets him sleep first after she’s cleaned up his wound, because he must have been awake for nearly 30 hours by this point. Talking to her. Worrying about her. Waiting for her, killing for her, running for her, leaving everything for her. She looks across the room to the outline of his body, his features and expression once again cloaked by darkness, and she gets a sick sort of twisting feeling deep in her stomach, but not even her stomach, somewhere deeper, she doesn’t know where.

She panics; stands up, hobbles to the pile of bags, stuffs money, guns, clothes and her safebox into her bag, everything she needs to survive alone, and zips it up tight, hands trembling. He’s still lying there, and she realises she’s never seen him sleep before. She picks up the car keys from the table, and she already has trainers on her feet, but she never wears trainers - she doesn’t even own a pair of trainers, but the laces have been tied into perfectly neat bows on her feet, and they carry her away from Barnes’ sleeping form. She has opened the door, the fresh air rushing onto her face, a pale moon glinting low in the sky, and it should all be so easy to leave.

But her hands lower the bag down in disgust and shut the door with a soft click, and her eyes keep looking at Barnes. She hates herself for not leaving, but she would hate herself more for not staying. The keys return gently to the table, softly so she doesn’t wake him, but she doesn’t take her trainers off because she can’t bear to undo the seamless bows. To distract her brain from the questions that hover and circle and wait, she swallows more painkillers dry, then hunches herself over the map and brings up the information Tobias sent her, and gets to work.

He wakes with a start hours later when the first rays of sunlight pierce through the moth eaten blinds, dancing across his face. He looks at her straight away, and his breath leaves him slowly, relief or pain or regret or anger or _something_ – she has gone back to not knowing; his face is closed off to her again, not even any gaps to let any light through like the stupid blinds.

“You’re still here.”

She stiffens and keeps her eyes on the map in front of her. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

He sits up. He’s still shirtless, and he examines his stab wound with resignation. “It’s how you work, ain’t it, sweetheart? Alone?”

She doesn’t know why it stings quite so much – maybe because it’s true, maybe because they both know she at least considered deserting him. It pierces into that place somewhere inside her, not quite her stomach, but where there were warm embers; a cold rush of reality that drowns the twisting heat. When she looks at him, she misses it, and she can’t answer him because suddenly she doesn’t know if it is true or if it is just what she has made herself believe all these years.

“I’ve planned a route to get to Canada. We should avoid the major cities - the Mob have people in all of them. They might’ve forgotten about me alone, but you shooting Riccoletti won’t slip their minds.”

He just nods, then gets up with a pained grimace, stalking towards the small bathroom in the corner.

“We should leave. You can sleep in the car.” He says it reluctantly, throwing the comment over his shoulder without so much as turning his head or pausing his retreat, and then he’s slipped through the bathroom door and shut it firmly, quietly between them and all she can do is look down at her shoe laces and wait for him to come back.

 

**

 

She falls asleep in the car, like he told her to, and only wakes a few hours when he starts shouting.

“What the fuck?” she snaps at him, heart pounding from the unsettling tendrils of a dream she can’t, doesn’t want to, remember.

“So much for a fucking safe house,” he snarls, turning the car so that they were cruising away from what should have been their destination.

She twists her head the same way as his, taking in the apartment block in the centre of Minneapolis that looks like it should be entirely forgettable, like it should be the home of some middle aged office worker who only came home for the brief and boring interlude between the hours of their inconsequential job. Only right now, to the trained criminal eye, it was crawling with undercover cops, each of them dressed as casually as possible and trying desperately to be subtle about the radio coms they had in their ears.

“Fuck,” she hisses, “I’m gonna fucking kill Tobias.”

“We ain’t gonna get to him if we’re behind bars, doll.”

He’s trying to keep the edge off his anger, or his panic – she can’t really tell, but she is practised in seeing past the fake calmness he likes to plaster over his face. She learnt a while ago that when he gets like this, it’s not about his face, she has to look at his body to see the anger; at his shoulders raised an inch in tension, at his hands gripping the steering wheel with steady and still focus, at his chest that stills in its rising and falling, like the sea calming and receding before unleashing a tsunami that destroys everything.

She tries to ignore whatever it is she feels when she remembers all of this about him, but it’s difficult because the warm, twisting feeling has made sparks again inside her. She had thought that had only happened inside the motel; it had felt like there were different rules for them in there, not out here in the daylight. But still the heat clenches distractingly.

“Maybe heading west won’t work,” she says. The safehouses were set up going west, and they had agreed that was the best route anyway because it avoided the major eastern cities which were crawling in branches of the Italian’s mob.

“Well, no shit, if Tobias has fuckin’ sold us out. The cops’ll be waiting at every one of the safehouses.”

“So we’ll have to go east.”

“Fuckin’ suicide,” he mutters, jaw clenching, his whole body taught and poised for something to snap. “Every city has Italians in it. They’ll be waiting for us.”

“I’m not risking getting caught by the cops.”

He glances at her, and maybe it’s part of the tsunami he’s holding back, or maybe it’s something he’s always wondered but never managed to work into the careful script they stuck to in Chicago, but he asks her, “Why do cops scare you so much, Lewis?”

“They don’t,” she snaps.

“Coulda fuckin’ fooled me,” he mutters, fingers tapping out a rhythm on the steering wheel. “It just doesn’t make any sense that you don’t give a shit if you get killed by the Italians but you run away from cops.”

“ _I_ didn’t want to run away, Barnes, you _made_ me. It’s not me who’s the fucking coward.” Each word is a bullet, a blade, a brick in a wall between them.

“That’s exactly my fucking point!” he yells. “You’re too deluded to run away from something that’s gonna kill you!”

“Why are you bringing this shit up again? If it wasn’t for you _shooting_ Riccoletti, we wouldn’t have had to run!”

“Fuck you, Lewis, this ain’t my fault. I was the one that dragged you up from where you were bleeding out on the pavement, surrounded by your own fuckin’ vomit, stitched up your shoulder and then went and finished the job you fuckin’ couldn’t!”

That stings, and she struggles to mask it. “I didn’t ask you to do that-”

“So you’d rather I’d let you bleed out then?”

“I don’t know!”

He clenches his fists on the wheel and lets out a bitter laugh. “Yeah you do, you’re just too proud to admit when you need help-”

“Oh, fucking seriously? _I’m_ too proud?” Her own hands are balled up in her lap, and she wants to be holding her gun, she wants to fight him with a weapon not words, because she always loses with words, and she’s not sure how much longer she can keep this duel up.

He’s driving like a maniac, foot pressing the accelerator as hard as the car will go. “I would never do something like that to you!”

“ _To_ you? I didn’t do anything _to_ you!”

“You have no idea how selfish you are, Lewis,” he grinds out.

“Selfish,” she laughs. “We both kill people, Barnes - we steal, and lie and cheat and you’re calling me out on being _selfish_?” She’s yelling at him now. “You of all people- You- If you think I have no idea how selfish I am, get some fucking perspective, Barnes, we’re both selfish pricks! I don’t expect you to be generous or sweet, because I already know that you’re a lying, egotistical, piece of shit of a human, because I’m the exact fucking same!”

He’s silent and her words hang heavy in the air between them, too big and loud for the small space in the car. She stares ahead at the road, unfocused on the scenery that rushes past, aware only of the raging anger inside of herself. She hates him, hates his questions, his prying thoughts and words and way of working things out; acting as if he knew her – as if they were friends, as if she had let him inside her and unspooled her thoughts and past and hopes. This is why she works alone, she reminds herself bitterly. What a fucking idiot. Thinking she could team up with someone. Have a partner – rely on someone other than herself. What a fucking joke. She should – she _does_ know better.

“Let’s get one thing fucking straight, alright,” she hisses, “you don’t know anything about me, so stop fucking pretending that you do.”

She sees his hands grip the wheel tighter, his foot press the pedal harder, but he doesn’t reply. She goes back to a fitful sleep for the rest of the drive, only waking up when they reach their next stop; Kansas City.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what, you thought i'd make it easy for them??


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're on our way to gross discussions of feelings and emotions!!!!!

The second motel is nicer than the first one, and where before their rough appearance went unnoticed, here they are the subject of disapproving glances. They pay in cash again, evidently another red flag for the motel patron.

“We’ll have to leave early tomorrow,” he mutters as he unlocks the door.

They’re the first words he’s spoken since their argument in the car, and she tries to be pleased that his focus is back on work rather than her. But then he reaches for her bag because he can see her grimacing at the pain, and it’s like someone is holding a lighter inside of her and flicking it on and off again.

“I can carry my own fucking bag.”

His eyes harden and he walks away from her, throwing his jacket on the double bed that occupies centre stage of the room and retreating again to the bathroom. She manages to drag the bag until it rests beside the greying white sheets on the bed, and notes with anger that they will be sharing a bed tonight.

She feels restless; she has slept too much, been too stagnant and still – both physically and mentally. They have been fleeing not fighting, and she craves the stimulation; the blood pumping through her body, the precarious balance of chance that tolerates life, the abandonment of rules and facts, relying instead purely on perception; the freedom of a fight.

*

The bar she finds is dingy and dark, and when she rests her hand on the bar, the surface is sticky. She doesn’t want to know why. She shoves her hands in the pockets of her hoodie and resents her appearance. She’s used to the glances and stares from men in awe of her body, her hair, her lipstick, her heels, and now she is plain faced in trainers and a hoodie and there are no looks or whispers; she can barely get the bartenders attention, but it all just makes her firmer in her need to hurt any stupid man who leers at her breasts but ignores her voice asking for a double vodka please.

She orders drinks one after the other, and eventually the bartender is giving her attention, but it’s a wary gaze of surprise at the pace she’s putting the vodka away. Her head is swimming and spinning at the same time, doing roly-polys underwater. She laughs – roly-polys underwater with a blonde haired boy a few years younger than her, who can do the most in a row, who can touch the bottom of the pool, who can hold their breath the longest, who can hold their breath till they’re dizzy, who can hold their breath till they pass out-

“Hey! You alright?”

It’s the bartender, he’s grabbed her by the arm from behind the bar. She’s breathing hard, gulping in the air and she starts laughing again because she realises she was having a holding your breath competition with herself. Now the bartender is looking at her like she’s really mental. Maybe she really is. That thought sobers her up and she stops laughing suddenly.

“You just hold on tight to my arm,” he’s telling her with a smile. “She’s had a little too much, hasn’t she boys?” he throws the last comment across to the other men, and she dimly hears a chorus of laughter. “Bit of a party girl, huh? You just wait here while I close up and then I’m gonna sort you out, darlin’, don’t worry.” He’s looking at the other men again and they are all laughing at her.

His patronising voice grates against the pace of the thoughts in her head, and she looks down at his hand on her arm, possessive even though he doesn’t know her, even though he doesn’t think she’s pretty, he still wants to fuck her, he still thinks he is in charge, still thinks he can tell her what to do like a child. His hand becomes too hot, too tight on her arm; she thinks she can feel his sweaty palm even through her hoodie, she can smell his beer that clings to his breath as he speaks to her between lips surrounded by days old stubble, can see his greasy hair stuck to his forehead, littered with specks of dry skin.

“Sweetheart, what’s your name?”

“Get the fuck off,” she slurs, stands up on the rungs of her stool to lean forward, and shoves him backwards, hard. “Jus’ Barnes that calls me sweetheart, prick.”

He crashes into bottles and glasses on the opposite side of the bar. The rest of the men have stopped, mouths agape, not sure how to react, and she stands up and leans over the bar to grab the vodka bottle. She pours a healthy amount straight into her mouth, wipes her lips with the back of her hand, and then turns and grins at them all.

“Who’s next?” she drawls clumsily.

They still don’t move; they still think she’s a trashy alcoholic not worth the fight. And maybe she is a trashy alcoholic, but she’s also Darcy fucking Lewis, so she lunges forward to the closest man to her and swings the vodka bottle up to meet his head. It doesn’t smash, which is disappointing, but he is knocked off his stool and roars in pain, so she’s somewhat satisfied. It also seems to convince the rest of them that she is worth their anger, because they’re all on their feet and two try to grab her arms and pin them down, but she won’t let them throw her out or treat her like a nuisance; she deserves to be treated like she’s a threat.

She ducks under their arms, and the ground swings towards her face alarmingly, and she’s suddenly on the floor. Her trainer finds one man’s knee cap and another’s groin and then she staggers up, but forgets not to use her bad arm to push herself and so she’s screaming out in pain as she elbows someone in the stomach. The pain is distracting, and she is shoved backwards into the wall, and takes a punch to the stomach which winds her because she wasn’t tensed up at all. She curls into a ball to get her breath back, tuning out their feeble attempts at kicking her – they’ve got nothing on the Russian mob.

One of them starts to drag her upright, and his hand digs into her shoulder. The pain is beyond a feeling in her head – it’s her whole body, white hot fire that burns everywhere. She can hear him yelling at her, swearing at her, and she opens her eyes as the pain is receding just in time to see him raise his hand and slap her across the face.

“Get the fuck off her!”

That voice and the slap she just received push her through the foggy layers resting on her mind, and she shakes her head to focus a little more. Squinting towards the door, she can see the source of the voice. He’s striding towards them, dark clothes and hair and a dark look on his face that she knows from experience means he isn’t going easy on anyone.

“She just tried to kill us all! She’s a fucking psycho-”

He doesn’t finish his sentence because Barnes has reached them and grabbed the man by his shirt and thrown him into the table, then turned to the next man and delivered a punch to his sternum, and on and on. As her brain pushes through the numbness of the alcohol, the pain is slowing growing, and suddenly she’s freezing cold too, shaking and shivering and trying to breath evenly through the throbbing pain of her arm. She forces her eyes open and latches on to Bucky, mapping his movements across the cramped bar, a dark figure moving with a strange combination of grace and insensitivity as he works his way through the men who still think they should fight back.

She breathes in, he turns to the left, right forearm blocking a fist, she breathes out, he steps forward almost lazily to avoid an elbow, and she gets lost in the rhythm of his fighting. She feels suddenly like this has all happened before; she is back lying on a pavement, pouring blood out of her shoulder, slipping through consciousness and he came to help her then, just as he is doing now, and she feels guilty for getting injured again, for being reckless and angry and proud like she was last time.

The men are starting to leave the bar, backing away from Barnes and edging towards the door as they realise they are sorely outmatched. He stands, still and calm, waiting to see if any will continue to fight, but they all follow suit and then it’s just her and Barnes alone in the dark.

She wants to speak first, but he beats her to it as he walks towards her. “You okay?”

“’M fine.” Her tongue is still clumsy and slow in her mouth.

He crouches down to help her stand, and his hands are light against her body, barely touching, only holding her if he has to, then moving away quickly; skimming over her and flitting across her skin uncertainly, a strange contrast to his sure and firm movements a moment ago.

“How d’you find me?” she mumbles once she’s standing. She realises she’s holding onto his arms because she was swaying slightly on her feet, and looks up to find his face only inches from hers, eyes open wide in the dark room, but she doesn’t let go of him.

“When I came back in the room you were gone. Knew you’d’ve gone to a bar to pick a fight,” he shrugs, then shakes his head as she tries to interrupt. “It’s what you do when you’re pissed, doll. Just a case of finding the right goddamn bar.”

She’s surprised, and her thoughts are still muddled, but she was expecting him to be angry; to shout at her for being stupid, attracting attention, risking getting the cops called, going off on her own.

“You didn’t think I’d left you?” She doesn’t know why she even says it; she wasn’t even thinking it, and she panics and starts to let go of him and turn away, but his voice stops her.

“You didn’t take that little box from your safe with you. Ain’t got a clue what’s in it, but I know you’d never leave without it.”

She grips his arms tighter and takes a deep breath and then mumbles, “Sorry.”

He’s silent for a moment, and as she’s staring at his chest she can see his breathing still. “What?”

She swallows and looks up at his face. “You heard me the first time, Bucky, don’t make me say it again.”

His first name; another mistake, and she can see it written across his face, but instead of laughing at her or mocking her, his lips just turn upwards slightly and he lets out a breath.

“First time you’ve ever called me that, Lewis.” He pauses. “Darcy.”

She can’t seem to look away from his face, and the twisting heat is on full force deep inside her, burning steady, strong, bright, terrifying, brilliant.

“C’mon, Darce, you’re shaking.” His voice is cautious around her name, cradling the sound as if it’s special, as if it’s valuable and delicate and treasured.

She lets him tow her out of the bar, stepping around the knocked over bar stools and glass littering the floor, out into the street where there is a bright moon hanging against a black sky, over half way towards being full and perfect. The stars are faint whispers of light, reduced in their brilliance by the light pollution of the city, but still there, glistening in the background, uncaring for the triviality of cities and electricity and human plight, and she cranes her neck back as far as possible to look up at them.

“The fuck are you doin’, doll?” The words could be angry, hard, selfish, but his voice has made them playful, soft, maybe even fond, if she forgot who they both were for a moment and only listened to the smile she knows forms the words.

“Just nice to see a clear sky for once.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back!!! after a ridiculously long and unintentional hiatus - i'm very sorry to disappear for so long. I had a whole host of personal change going on and it took a while to reorder my life. I am still determined to finish this story though. I hope you enjoy the next chapter :)

When they get back to the motel she has to run straight to the bathroom on unsteady legs, making it to the toilet just in time to throw up the vodka she filled her empty stomach with. Bucky is there a minute later, his hands carding her hair away from her face. She sits back and barely registers his movements as he ties her hair back for her, then pushes her gently to turn and lean against the wall. A glass of water is pressed into her hands, which she gulps down, and then he’s passing her some slightly stale bread and dry crackers. She can’t remember the last time someone took care of her like this; softly, gently, quietly.

“Better?” he says, looking at her with steady eyes. She nods. “Was it just vodka?”

She nods again, and then grabs the edge of the toilet bowl as she is sick for a second time. When she’s done gagging and spitting, she turns her head briefly away from the toilet and slurs, “Why did you come and get me?”

“I wasn’t gonna leave you to get beaten up, Darcy.”

She huffs instinctively. “I can take care of myself,” she tells the inside of the toilet as sharply as her heavy tongue will let her.

But then she bites her lip and groans, pushing away from the toilet and flushing it as she leans back against the wall opposite him. “No, that’s not what you meant, I know that, I’m just getting used to it…” she trails off and takes another gulp of water so she doesn’t have to speak.

He’s quiet for a few moments. “Ain’t any doubt you can take care of yourself, doll, but doesn’t mean I ain’t gonna try too.”

Her stomach isn’t feeling sick anymore, just twisted with a hot, nervous energy. “Why?”

She drinks more water and swallows some bread, gradually sobering under his heavy gaze.

“Maybe so you’ll owe me.”

It’s an echo of something she once said to him, a lifetime ago in the toilet of a bar in Chicago, when he was the one throwing up and she had just ruined her dress helping him, and she had no excuse to hide behind except selfishness.

“Maybe because, even if you think we’re lying, egotistical, pieces of shit, I think there’s still some good left in both of us.” He’s not looking at her anymore, but she can’t look away. His voice is so soft when he speaks again she has to lean forward. “Maybe because you’re the only person I got left.”

Her heart thuds. “What did you mean in the car earlier when you said you’d never do that to me?”

He rubs a hand across his face. “I just meant… When you went after Riccoletti, I was a mess. Fuck, I looked for you for hours. Waited at your apartment. Then you pulled up and fell out the car, blood everywhere, and I-” He shakes his head. “I had to carry your body upstairs, and the whole time I didn’t know if you’d be alive once we got up there. It reminded me… I just- I couldn’t believe you didn’t care if you lived or died. That you didn’t give a shit if you left me alone.” His voice cracks a little on the last part, and Darcy has never felt this strongly and this badly.

“I did,” she mumbles, and she realises that she’s got goddamn tears running down her cheeks, but she doesn’t even care. “You were all I could think about when I was lying in the pavement.”

“Why do you always push me away, Lewis?”

“Don’t do that,” she says, “don’t go back to calling me Lewis.”

He just looks at her, and his whole body radiates exhaustion.

“I’m not going to do that anymore,” she tells him, and she actually believes herself. “I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to work alone. What I said in the car, I was angry.”

She takes another few gulps of water, draining the glass. He takes it from her silently and refills it, passing it back with a roll of toilet paper, waiting for her to say something else.

“I thought you didn’t- I wanted to think you didn’t know me,” she says, wiping her face of the tears, but they are immediately replaced by fresh ones. “But you do. You know me better than anyone. I can’t pretend that’s not true anymore. After L.A., I just…” She stops because she’s never told anyone about that. Or rather, she’s never had anyone to tell. “You’re right – I didn’t care if I lived, or died, or got beaten up, or stabbed-”

“That’s what I mean-”

“But I do now!” She can’t look away from him. His expression is so open and unguarded he almost looks like a different person. “I said it already – you were all I could goddamn think about when I was getting shot at by Riccoletti, and the last fucking thing I remember thinking was how I’d let you down, Bucky! The last thing I felt was guilt! And I’m sorry it took me nearly getting killed to see that, I don’t know why I can’t just feel things like a normal person, I don’t know why it took me so long to see you properly,” she’s crying horribly now, tight gasps of her chest and hot tears soaking down her neck. “You’re the only person I’ve got left too.”

She can’t quite get out everything she’s sorry for; there’s too much, and the honesty she’s already shown has been exhausting and challenging as it is, but he understands anyway. The way he’s looking at her she knows that he understands why she can’t say more, why it’s taken her so long to say this much, why their whole relationship seems to have shifted cosmically and irreversibly in the past few days.

He moves, and for a second she thinks he’s getting up and leaving her, crumpled and crying on the floor of the toilet, but then he’s sitting right next to her and passing her more toilet roll to mop up her tears and running nose. She cries for a long time, and when she opens her eyes, his right arm is cradling her shoulders and her head is resting on his collarbone.

She tilts her head up, but all she can see is his neck. The hollow of his throat is right in front of her, and she can smell his overwhelmingly familiar scent, laced with sweat and cigarettes, and before she can stop herself, she leans forward and presses her lips against his skin gently, fleetingly, and then retreats. His whole body tenses under her, his arm tightening on her shoulder, but then his head drops until his forehead presses into her hair. She doesn’t know if she imagines it or he really does it, but she thinks she feels his lips against her hair, mirroring her own.

“Let’s go to bed, Darce,” he says after a while.

He helps her up and she brushes her teeth, drinks more water and then he tows her over to the bed and sits her down. He kneels in front of her and unlaces her shoes carefully, his head bent to concentrate on the task, and it’s the most innocent thing he’s ever done when knelt between her legs. She shivers as his hands rest on her ankles after her shoes are pulled off. They haven’t touched each other like that since this whole mess started, but even back then his hands were never this gentle. Or maybe he tried but she wouldn’t let him.

He stands up and turns the light off, and she can see his dark silhouette against the pale light that seeps in around the blinds as he pulls off his shirt, jeans and boots and lies down on the bed, pulling the covers around himself. She pads quietly over to their bags. Her small locked box is nestled under one of her hoodies – or his, she can’t tell anymore – and she opens it carefully under the faint moonlight. She brushes aside each item until she finds the ring. The delicate gold ring Bucky had given her so long ago in room 505. It glistens almost silver under the pale moonlight, a simple thread of gold, the only decoration a delicate knot formed by the metal itself; an uninterrupted band that slips onto her finger easily and feels like it belongs there.

She peels her tracksuits, hoodie and socks off and climbs in next to Bucky under the duvet. She can feel the heat of his body in the dark, and she’s not sure who moves first, but he’s reaching for her at the same time as she shuffles towards him, and they meet in the middle in a soft embrace that she never knew either of them were capable of. His arms circle her gently and his chin rests atop her head, and she winds her arms around his bare torso, fingers curling into the curve of his back as her forehead rests against his warm chest.


End file.
